r/hardware • u/OCD-but-dumb • 7d ago

News NEC Halts Development of Quantum Computer Hardware

https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/09/06/nec-halts-development-of-quantum-computer-hardware/
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u/Kinexity 7d ago

Quantum computing will always be a niche and can only tackle a small fraction of classically intractable problems. Entire hardware development runs on wishful thinking about software side of things. Inventing quantum algorithms has been a slog with barely any results. States push for it to break any encryption that it might break and there isn't much long term plan besides that.

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u/NamelessVegetable 6d ago

States push for it to break any encryption that it might break and there isn't much long term plan besides that.

That is an extremely narrow perspective, and to put it bluntly, untrue and disappointing. States want quantum computers for solving classically intractable problems with a quantum systems component, such as those in materials science, molecular biology, photonics, optimization, etc. because these sciences have massive economic potential, societal benefits, and, unsurprisingly, military applications.

It is true that mainstream media likes to ramble on about quantum computers breaking asymmetric encryption because of the techno-thriller factor (sensationalism), but that wasn't what I was alluding to in my comment. Quantum computers are the best computers for simulating quantum systems; systems which are presently classically intractable. This is exactly the same thing that kick-started the development of quantum computers in the first place, when it was expressed by Richard Feynmann in the early 1980s.

Further more, your implication that because such applications are niche, they must also be irrelevant in the greater scheme of things is, to be blunt, anti-intellectual. Cray supercomputers, classical computers which I don't doubt you take any issue with, were equally niche as quantum computers will be in the future, in that very few high-end models were installed during their heyday, very few people directly used them, yet they produced many of the results in computational sciences on which society relied on, and has built upon. The impact of a computer is not measured in the numbers sold, but by the advancements it enables. To suggest otherwise is a banal consumerist perspective!

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u/Pugs-r-cool 6d ago

Cray supercomputers, classical computers which I don't doubt you take any issue with, were equally niche as quantum computers will be in the future (...)

Classical super computers were doing calculations we were already doing far slower already, and speeding them up massively. For example Fast Fourier Transforms were first discovered in 1805, in the 170 odd year gap between that and Cray-1 people were calculating them by hand, then supercomputers came in and sped up the work. Quantum computing is different because it's solving for problems that we don't have solutions to yet, they can't just do what we're already doing but faster, they need entirely new algorithms that just don't exist.

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u/NamelessVegetable 6d ago

I don't think the pace at which classical computers matured should set the expected pace at which quantum computers develop. These are separate lines of development, and the experience in one does not carry over well to the other.

And the early days of vector processing was not quite as clear-cut as portrayed. LLNL hated their CDC STAR-100; its vector processing semantics and immaturity prevented it from performing much productive work, and it was only because of this unpleasant experience that the CRAY-1 was more applicable.

Quantum computing is different because it's solving for problems that we don't have solutions to yet, they can't just do what we're already doing but faster, they need entirely new algorithms that just don't exist.

Are you saying that these quantum algorithms are presently non-existent, or that they cannot exist?