Quantum Computing Roadmap for Solving Scientific Challenges

(TechRepublic) IBM and partners are strongly urging organizations to begin discussing the issues they have that quantum could solve and think about investing in the technology—now.
Quantum is entering the mainstream of the computing world because “today’s powerful computers are not enough,” said Heike Riel, IBM Fellow and lead IBM Research Quantum Europe & Africa.
IBM’s roadmap for quantum has gone from 27 qubit chips in 2019 to 65 qubits in 2020. Next year’s goal is to break 100 the quantum barrier and demonstrate a 127 chip called Eagle, Riel said. In 2022, the expectation is 433 qubits and a chip called Osprey, as well as more miniaturization of components and integration, she said.
By the end of 2023, the goal is to break the 1,000 qubit barrier to allow for more applications, and “lead us to a path of one million qubits, which will require new infrastructure and quantum error correction,” Riel said.
To prepare for quantum, organizations need to investigate the problems they would like to apply the technology to, Benno Broer, founder and CEO of the Netherlands-based Qu & Co.. “What you see quite often is companies start by identifying the most relevant use cases … where they’re trying to use high-performance computing-type solutions that are falling short or expect to.”
The second action is for people to start sharing their domain knowledge, he recommended. “Get that dialogue going because if we don’t share domain expertise with someone who could potentially solve [a problem] with quantum, the solution won’t be developed.”
Because it will take time to develop those methods, people should also collaborate on quantum projects and test them on new hardware, he said.