Quantum Computing 2022 Update

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time it's my sixth annual update on developments in quantum computing in particular i'm going to provide a non-technical overview of some key innovations at ibm intel and microsoft but before that let's begin with a summary of what quantum computing is all about conventional or classical computers process data using binary digits or bits that can represent a value of either one or zero in contrast quantum computers process data using quantum bits or qubits due to a quantum mechanical phenomena called superposition qubits can exist in more than one state at exactly the same point in time bizarrely this means that a qubit can have a value of both 1 and 0 simultaneously but when a qubit is observed its state always collapses to a value of either 1 or 0. in quantum computation qubits represent the probability that their observed state will be either one or zero and because there are an infinite range of probabilities between one and zero this means that a qubit can represent a far larger range of data values than a classical bit pairs of qubits can also become entangled this means that the state of one qubit is tied to the state of another regardless of how far apart the two qubits may be by taking advantage of superposition and entanglement quantum computers will be able to accomplish tasks that are too complex for conventional computers such tasks are likely to include running molecular simulations with future quantum computers expected to improve our understanding of physics chemistry and biology and in turn our practice of engineering and healthcare we should therefore expect quantum computing to seed a revolution across a wide range of industrial sectors well beyond traditional computation indeed it's likely that quantum computing will help to deliver new medicines and new materials before it changes what we do on our smartphones when it comes to building a quantum computer qubits can be created in many different ways these include using superconducting electronic circuits trapping ionized atoms or squeezing light most of the time this requires the materials from which qubits are constructed to be supercooled to almost absolute zero however photonic quantum hardware from a company called xanadu and which i discussed in last year's update uses qubits that function at around 25 degrees celsius right now xanadu's systems do rely on a supercooled photon counter but the company predicts that photonic quantum computers able to work entirely at room temperature are a future possibility whether supercooled or not all qubits rapidly decohere and become unstable as a result quantum computers require high levels of error correction and error mitigation to perform useful work most future quantum computers are also likely to require tens or hundreds of thousands of qubits given that current hardware generally offers no more than around 130 qubits there is still a massive mountain to climb so let's see what progress has been reported in the past 12 months for many decades ibm has been a leading quantum computing pioneer back in may 2016 it was the first company to offer cloud access to quantum hardware and in may 2022 it once again expanded its quantum computing roadmap this charts ibm's ambition to progress from its current 127 qubit eagle processor and to deliver far more powerful quantum-centric hardware and software solutions by 2025 and beyond in the second half of 2022 ibm plans to release a new 433 cubit processor called osprey but as it has now revealed in subsequent years the intention is to scale up the number of qubits in a system by moving beyond the limits of a single chip processor or as ibm explain we don't plan to realize large-scale quantum computers on a giant chip instead we're developing ways to link processes together into a modular system capable of scaling without physics limitations ibm is working on three different scaling techniques the first of which is called circuit knitting this will allow quantum computational routines known as quantum circuits to be broken into smaller pieces that can be run on different quantum processors with the results knitted back together using a classical to achieve circuit knitting in 2023 a 133 cubit processor called heron will be released this will feature control hardware to allow real-time classical communication between separate processes so facilitating multi-threaded parallel quantum processing ibm's second scaling method is to build multi-chip quantum processors here two cubic dates called chip to chip couplers will connect different quantum chips together this innovation is slated for delivery in 2024 in a 408 cubic processor called crossbill internally this will link together three smaller chips to function like one larger quantum processor finally the longer term goal is quantum parallelization here individual quantum processors will be linked together with quantum rather than classical communications links initially in 2024 ibm plans to connect three 462 qubit single chip processors called flamingo to create a 1 386 cubit system and then in 2025 the intention is to quantum link three 1 386 qubit multi-chip processors called cook boro this should result in a 4158 cubit quantum computer although potentially more processors could be included looking even further ahead ibm states that its goal is to build quantum-centric supercomputers as it explains the quantum-centric supercomputer will incorporate quantum processors classical processes quantum communication networks and classical networks all working together to completely transform how we compute in anticipation of the power of such future systems in july 2022 the national institute of standards and technology in the united states announced the first quantum safe standards for cyber security these were partially developed by ibm scientists and reflects the growing concern that companies may experience harvest now decrypt later attacks or in other words there is a growing risk that data will be stolen today for quantum decryption in the future ibm is far from the only pioneer seeking to develop systems with a large number of qubits also looking to scale up is intel who in march 2022 reported the successful mass manufacture of qubits using conventional optical lithographic and associated processes specifically at intel's d1 manufacturing factory in oregon researchers from intel and qtec managed to mass produce quantum dot spin qubits using standard microprocessor manufacturing techniques previously qubits have been produced on silicon using electron beam lithography this avoids the need for chemical polishing that can damage the qubits but is not scalable to industrial volumes however what intel has achieved is to mass produce qubits using its standard nanolithographic chip manufacturing process and traditional post processing in total 79 300 millimeter wafers were produced each containing 82 processor dies with up to 55 quantum gates 20 of these wafers were then analyzed and demonstrated a viable component yield greater than 95 percent intel and qtec's achievement is quite remarkable and could one day allow quantum processors to become widely available or as the researchers concluded their paper in nature electronics the compatibility of silicon spin qubits with fully industrial processing demonstrated here highlights their potential for scaling and for creating a fault tolerant full stack quantum computer another major player in the quantum computing arena is microsoft who now offer a cloud service called azure quantum this brings together resources from a range of other pioneers that include honeywell iron q righty and toshiba by backing a range of partners and research teams across the globe microsoft has avoided putting all of its eggs in one quantum basket however the company has for some time pursued the development of topological qubits as the most likely technology for delivering stable and hence scalable quantum computers and in march 2022 it reported on a key breakthrough in this field whilst a topological phase of matter has been hypothesized since 1937 it has never been unambiguously produced in the real world but microsoft's as your quantum team have now managed to engineer hardware that has induced a topological superconducting phase bookended by a pair of so-called majorana zero nodes further they've been able to quantify the stability of this phase so removing the biggest obstacle to producing a topological qubit explaining exactly what this means is well beyond the scope of this video but by demonstrating what microsoft terms one of the most exotic pieces of physics in the universe they have taken a giant step towards building a quantum computer with hardware level full tolerance in turn this should make a topological quantum computer highly scalable and if you want to know more there are links in the video description whilst ibm intel and microsoft are all doing amazing things they are far from the only pioneers taking a spin on the quantum computing merry-go-round indeed right now there are more than 30 companies and academic institutions working on quantum hardware or software not least these include google whose quantum ai website has been expanded into an excellent educational resource topics covered include google's 54 qubit sycamore processor the cloud computing service it now offers to developers and a python library called circ that can be used for programming and running quantum circuits other pioneers who've reported milestone innovations in 2022 include d-wave systems who on june the 16th provided cloud access to a prototype of its advantage 2 quantum computer this has over 500 qubits that are based on a technology called quantum and kneeling this is somewhat controversial and less controllable than other qubit technologies however quantum annealing is also easier to scale with d-wave having launched a 2 000 q-bit system back in 2017. and according to their june 2022 press release d-wave expects to deliver a 7 000 cubit advantage 2 by 2024 whenever i post one of these updates there are always some people down in the comments typing things like chris this is rubbish quantum computing will never become a commercial reality and given where we are today that could still be correct this said the computing industry does have a strong track record of making the apparently impossible possible and personally i think that quantum computers will become a commercial proposition by the late 2020s or early 2030s they won't replace classical computers they won't be used for the same things they'll run different types of applications they'll be used in conjunction with classical computers but i just have this very strong feeling that it is extremely unlikely that ibm and intel and microsoft and google and all of the other pioneers i think it is very unlikely that all of these companies are wrong and even if they are wrong there can be no doubt that today hundreds of millions of dollars have already been invested in quantum computing which means it's already part of the computing industry references for the things i've discussed in this video can be found down in the video description and if you want even more information look at the quantum page on explainingcomputers.com but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very recent [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 73,647

Keywords: quantum computing, IBM, IBM quantum computing, circuit knitting, quantum parallelization, multi-chip quantum, Intel quantum, Google Quantum, Mirosoft quantum, topological quantum, topoligical qubit, qubits, quantum computing tutorial, quantum computing explained, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, explaining quantum computing, what is quantum computing

Id: SORSZ9Je-8g

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022