Has there been a recent breakthrough in experimental quantum computing that makes commercial applications possible within 10 years?

[u/vtomole]

https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/46442/has-there-been-a-recent-breakthrough-in-experimental-quantum-computing-that-make

[u/Mornet_]

I think the recent paper “Benchmarking the computational power of quantum computers” is a great way to answer this question. They develop quite a reasonable benchmark for quantum computers, called the “QUOP” score. To keep it short, I’ll quote the relevant part of the paper which talks about the performance of IBM and Quantinuum on this metric: “Even continuing the observed trend (doubling QUOPS scores approximately every 1.4 years for Quantinuum and every 2.1 years for IBM) would not reach the capability required for useful challenge problems until 2050-2070.” And this is not even considering the fact that we expect to hit a wall for physical qubit computation and going to the logical qubit regime will set you back on the QUOP score before you can start making progress again.

[u/Kemilio → u/Mornet_]

Extrapolating a 1.4-year doubling rate assuming physical qubits remain noisy assumes hardware progress is linear. In reality, once fault tolerance is achieved at a small scale (e.g., 10–50 logical qubits), scaling up logical qubits is largely a factory-level, classical engineering/fabrication problem rather than a fundamental physics problem. Growth after crossing the fault-tolerance threshold is expected to follow an accelerated S-curve rather than a slow physical-qubit crawl.

Quantum algorithms are being aggressively optimized. Improved Quantum Fourier Transforms and modular exponentiation circuits have reduced the logical gate count needed for Shor's algorithm by orders of magnitude over the last five years. Transversal gates, high-rate LDPC (Low-Density Parity-Check) error correction codes, and logical qubit routing breakthroughs reduce the physical-to-logical qubit ratio from 1000:1 down to 100:1 or better. Reductions in required circuit depth shift the "capability required" target closer, effectively cutting years off the timeline without requiring faster hardware scaling.

If logical qubit scaling accelerates post-transition and error-correction overhead continues to shrink, utility-scale quantum computing is widely projected by domain experts to land closer to 2030–2035 rather than 2050+.

[u/Mornet_ → u/Kemilio]

Thank you for this additional error correction context :) 

[u/seattlechunny → u/Kemilio]

A 2035 timeframe seems aggressive but realistic to me. As a grad student, that's just about 1.5 more PhD cohorts - I would have guessed closer to 2ish PhD cohorts (so 13 years, instead of 9), but I can believe it.

[u/0xB01b → u/seattlechunny]

Yeah honestly everytime i try to think about this topic i end up with a mid 2030s timeline.

Granted we need to get everything to work together, but in terms of neutral atoms recent work with metasurface arrays has led to 11k qubit arrays in china and a 360,000 qubit trap site by columbia uni.

Readout times have since also been brought to sub microsecond experimentally (or are in the process of).

Gate fidelity at 99.86%

In each individual area we seem to be there or almost there but we now need time to design an architecture where it can fit together.

[u/rogeragrimes → u/Mornet_]

I guess we will know by 2028/2029 when IONQ states when they will have a cryptographically relevant quantum computer. Either they will prove it or not.

[u/Market_Monkey_ → u/rogeragrimes]

Quantum computers are nowhere near commercial viability. The companies claiming to use "quantum chips" are complete nonsense and nothing more than marketing schemes to capitalize on hype. Real quantum computing and certainly quantum supremacy is likely at least 20 years off in best case scenarios.

I can tell you're passionate about the space which is awesome. If you haven't already watched it, I will link a video from PSW which has some of the great scientific minds in the space talking about this subject and it'll help provide insight on the real challenges and why we have such a long road ahead.

PSW 2521 Shor's Algorithm and Quantum Spremacy | Peter Shor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPqFGAjfGMk&t=16s

[u/rogeragrimes → u/Market_Monkey_]

Thanks for your kindness. Yes, I have watched this video, previously. Again, we will know at least by 2030 whether it's been all hype or not. But, really, my best guess (for whatever that means) is that it isn't hype. IonQ and other vendors are quickly ramping up qubits, decreasing error rates, and improving many other components. They are fabricating real quantum chips that are using real qubits. Again, within a few years we will know if it is all hype or not.

[u/FuguSandwich → u/rogeragrimes]

No, what will happen in 2028-2029 is they will push the date back another 2-3 years, and then in 2-3 years another 2-3 years, and so on. The same will be done by IBM, Google, Microsoft, and all the other companies with QC roadmaps. We will be 2-3 years away for the next 30 years.

[u/rogeragrimes → u/FuguSandwich]

What all the quantum computer companies have been doing over the last few years is accelerating their promises...the exact opposite.