MEXICO: Researchers at IBM have stitched together a prototype circuit that could become the basis of quantum computers a decade hence.
The circuit, an assemblage of four supercooled, superconducting devices known as qubits, checks for the critical errors that make quantum chips so difficult to build. The IBM research is set to be described this week in a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Alternative processors such as quantum chips are becoming important. Although today’s computer chips continue to pile on transistors at the heady clip predicted by Moore’s Law, their components are so tiny they’re becoming harder and harder to shrink.
“Moore’s law is going to come to an end in the next decade, for sure,” said Supratik Guha, a director at IBM Research. When that happens, the computer industry will need to find a new way to deliver the performance gains that have fueled its break-neck growth for the past 50 years.
IBM is betting that a quantum computer could be the next major step beyond traditional, or classical, computing, helping unlock a new generation of data analysis, machine learning, encryption and scientific research. Last summer, IBM said it would spend $US3 billion over the next five years on next-generation semiconductor research, including quantum computing.
The four-qubit IBM circuit gives a sense of what quantum chips will look like as IBM adds such technology to microprocessors, says Raymond Laflamme, the executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing. He believes that IBM is now a “couple of years” away from building a 16-qubit machine.
IBM researchers believe that a machine capable of calculating hundreds of qubits could be five to 10 years out. Nobody knows how long it would take for quantum machines to displace conventional computers or whether that will happen.
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