IBM, Microsoft and Boeing mark advances in quantum computing

The world’s top quantum researchers, investors, and government officials gathered in D.C. for the third annual Quantum World Congress last week, and, even though we’re still years away from a practical quantum computer, the mood was upbeat, with significant new announcements in the areas of quantum computing, quantum networking, and investment.

IBM, Microsoft and Boeing all had big announcements to make, with some indications that the industry may be entering a new phase of development. (Read more about Boeing’s plans to launch a satellite to facilitate quantum communications.)

Quantum computing breakthroughs

For most of quantum computing’s history, virtually all the research has focused on developing the underlying hardware, says Jay Gambetta, vice president in charge of IBM’s quantum initiative. But the software side is even more important when it comes to actual enterprise applications, and, this morning, IBM announced what amounts to a kind of app store for quantum software.

There are six functions available today in IBM’s Quiskit Functions Catalog from IBM and from partners. Four of these functions abstract away performance management and improve error correction and performance. Two eliminate the need to understand quantum circuits – one in the optimization space and one in the chemistry space.

“It’s a stepping stone towards libraries and a future application store,” says Gambetta.

Now people with expertise in specific business subjects can start to experiment with quantum computing without having to be quantum scientists themselves, he says. “It accelerates the race to find useful applications.”

Gambetta says that IBM has been making quantum computing available to customers since 2016, via the cloud, with hundreds of institutions using the platform.

“We’re going to focus on building the platform and we want all the innovators and the startups to do algorithm discovery,” he says. “We’ll have enterprise cases in the next few years. Until this announcement, I didn’t think it was really feasible.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft is also claiming to have the world’s most reliable quantum computing platform.

“The Azure Quantum Compute platform steps beyond our Azure Quantum Service and brings together more logical qubits and more reliable quantum computing,” says Krysta Svore, Microsoft’s vice president of advanced quantum development.

At last week’s Quantum World Congress, Microsoft announced that it partnered with Quantinuum to create 12 logical qubits, which, Svore says, is the most logical qubits on record. Quantinuum provided the quantum hardware and Microsoft handled the error correction.

These quantum computers are still too small to do anything that classical computers can’t do, but can already allow companies to experiment with use cases and test algorithms. “We have entered the era of reliable quantum computation,” she says.

According to Svore, it will take about 100 reliable logical qubits to do scientifically useful calculations, and about 1,000 logical qubits to have a general-purpose quantum computer that’s able to do things that classical computers can’t do.

“We’ve also shown a demonstration – the world’s first – of an integrated hybrid workflow across Azure HPC, logical qubits, and AI,” she says. This is important because quantum processing – like GPUs – will probably not replace entire computers but will instead act as accelerators, taking over when needed to solve otherwise intractable problems.

Like IBM’s Gambetta, Svore says she expects to reach quantum advantage before 2030.

What’s particularly interesting is that last week’s 12 qubit computer is triple the size of April’s four logical qubits and, more importantly, the number of physical qubits went from 30 to 56. That means that the number of logical qubits grew substantially faster than the number of underlying physical qubits required.

“What we’re showing is continued growth in the number of logical qubits,” said Jennifer Strabley, vice president and general manager at Quantinuum. “And the performance of the logical qubits is better than the performance of the underlying physical qubits.”

Strabley, too, believes that 2029 will be a tipping point for commercial applications for quantum computing technology.

Since one of those potential applications involves breaking existing encryption, NIST’s announcements of new quantum-proof encryption standards this August couldn’t have come at a better time.

Gartner analyst Chirag Dekate says it makes sense for enterprises leaning into a research and development mindset to take advantage of a platform that combines quantum computing with high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

“The question they’re asking themselves is, do they want to be an innovator, or wait on the sidelines?” he says. “The combination of AI and HPC enables them to explore a larger design space, in health care, financial services, manufacturing, and beyond. And they identify inflection points where classical advantage ends and quantum advantage begins.”

The enterprises are partnering with quantum platform provers like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon, he says. “They get their hands on these systems and explore what it takes to develop applications in a quantum context. It’s a really challenging task but these are real activities that researchers and enterprises are actually engaged with.”

Quantum investment expert Jennifer Addie, COO of advisory firm VentureScope and strategy direction at MACH37, a cyber accelerator program, says she was excited to hear Microsoft’s announcement. “For those looking at the trajectory, the progress is significant and faster than most people expected to see,” she says.

The prevailing sentiment has long been that quantum computers are still far in the distance, and that companies have plenty of time to prepare. “Well, it’s closer than you might think,” she says.

And while quantum computing research is still mostly grant-based, the investment community has begun making bets, she says. “MACH37 is aimed at very early stage startups,” she says. “And we’ve invested in several different quantum companies.”

The fact that startups can now easily get access to quantum computers via cloud platforms has made it easier for new kinds of companies to enter the space, not just those working on fundamental physics issues. For example, she says, they might be working on cybersecurity and other applications of quantum computing.

Read more about quantum computing

• Quantum networking takes off… into space
• NIST finally settles on quantum-safe crypto standards
• Error-correction breakthroughs bring quantum computing a step closer
• Post-quantum encryption: Crypto flexibility will prepare firms for quantum threat, experts say
• DARPA program aims to sift through quantum computing hype
• What is quantum computing good for? XPRIZE and Google offer cash for answers
• Microsoft claims quantum computing breakthrough
• What Microsoft’s error-correction milestone means for usable quantum computing
• IBM advances its quantum roadmap as competition heats up
• PSiQuantum to build first utility-scale quantum computer in Australia