IBM Promises 1000-Qubit Quantum Computer
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:
IBM promises 1000-qubit quantum computer:
Today, IBM made its aspirations more concrete by publicly announcing a "road map" for the development of its quantum computers, including the ambitious goal of building one containing 1000 qubits by 2023. IBM's current largest quantum computer, revealed this month, contains 65 qubits.
[...] The plan includes building intermediate-size machines of 127 and 433 qubits in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and envisions following up with a million-qubit machine at some unspecified date. Dario Gil, IBM's director of research, says he is confident his team can keep to the schedule. "A road map is more than a plan and a PowerPoint presentation," he says. "It's execution."
[...] IBM's declared timeline comes with an obvious risk that everyone will know if it misses its milestones. But the company decided to reveal its plans so that its clients and collaborators would know what to expect. Dozens of quantum-computing startup companies use IBM's current machines to develop their own software products, and knowing IBM's milestones should help developers better tailor their efforts to the hardware, Gil says.
[...] A 1000-qubit machine is a particularly important milestone in the development of a full-fledged quantum computer, researchers say. Such a machine would still be 1000 times too small to fulfill quantum computing's full potential-such as breaking current internet encryption schemes-but it would big enough to spot and correct the myriad errors that ordinarily plague the finicky quantum bits.
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