Governments and militaries are particularly interested in building a quantum
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at Argonne. “We now have the blueprint to make this quantum internet a
reality,” Department of Energy Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar
announced in July. Eventually, the department plans to build quantum test
loops at all 17 national laboratories and connect them together to create a
rudimentary nationwide quantum communications network.
For all of the investment and optimism, however, there’s also a very real sense
that the uncertainty of quantum’s capabilities represents a gamble. “Quantum
isn’t ready to solve real-world problems,” Matles admits. JPMorgan started its
quantum research about three years ago, and since then he’s watched
advancements such as the Sycamore experiment with interest. But he insists
that the company is still in an optimism phase and isn’t ready to speculate about
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take to be ready.
“We’re still in the world of simulation,” Hurley says of quantum information
technology. “These things aren’t computers. They’re great equipment for
exploiting the quantum space, but a lot of them aren’t accessible all the time.
They can’t solve anything that a regular computer can’t solve, and none of them
work without a classical computer attached to it.”
Indeed, if lossy qubits are the bane of quantum physicists, then access
challenges are the bane of corporate researchers. Every time a quantum
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entanglements will quite literally collapse. The risk that qubits will lose their
superposition and the information they can hold is known as decoherence, and
it’s further evidence of the fragile nature of quantum computers.
In September, Oliver and other scientists announced that they believe otherwise
harmless radiation from common objects like concrete walls hastens this
decoherence. Relegating quantum computers to radiation-free bunkers is
impractical, and the research into other potential remedies, such as background
noise trickery, has only just begun. So quantum computers will have to be reset
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computing as a cloud service, as Rigetti and Amazon are, that means a lot of
waiting time for your customers.