Researchers solving technology challenges to usher in the “Quantum Decade”

(NetworkedWorld) Quantum computing faces many technology challenges, but some researchers say they’ll be solved soon to usher in the Quantum Decade.
It’s always newsworthy when somebody sets a new standard for quantum computing processing speeds, even if quantum computers are far from common commercial use.In this case that somebody is IBM, which recently announced its newly developed quantum computing processor, called Eagle, has broken the 100-qubit barrier.
“Constructing a processor that breaks the hundred-qubit barrier wasn’t something we could do overnight,” IBM Fusion says. “Constructing one of these devices is an enormous challenge. Qubits can decohere—or forget their quantum information—with even the slightest nudge from the outside world.”
Decoherence is one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing. As Scientific American explains, use of quantum states “leaves the quantum computer much more vulnerable to errors than a classical computer would be.”
“These errors arise from decoherence, a process in which the environment interacts with the qubits, uncontrollably changing their quantum states and causing information stored by the quantum computer to be lost,” Scientific American writes. “Decoherence could come from many aspects of the environment: changing magnetic and electric fields, radiation from warm objects nearby, or cross talk between qubits.”
IBM has declared this the Quantum Decade, in which “enterprises begin to see business value from quantum computing.”
Overall, though, quantum computing will be a huge net plus for businesses, scientists, researchers and anyone who has to quicky perform what Harvard Business Review calls “combinatorics calculations.” Whenever the Quantum Decade actually begins, it will be exciting.