Video Interview: Yale Physicist Girvin Discusses ‘Building Perfect Computers from Imperfect Parts’

(ZDNet) Steven Girvin, a theoretical physicist at Yale, discusses the need for error correction for quantum computers in this video interview with ZDnet. Girvin asks, “How to build a perfect machine with imperfect parts?” He explains that today’s classical computers are so reliable that programmers don’t have to pay attention to taking care of errors, such as details of voltage. But “we’re not at that stage in quantum, parts are imperfect and numbers and types of errors are larger and more subtle.”
Girvin explains that the Achilles heel of a quantum system is its sensitivity to small sources of noise, to coupling to the environment because quantum systems are changed when you or the environment are changed when observing them.