Access challenges are compounded by the fact that you need a way to
communicate your algorithm from the classical computer to the quantum one.
Originally, Rigetti allowed customers to submit a circuit over the regular
internet and get the results back later.
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David Rivas, Rigetti’s senior vice president of systems and services. “But what
you really want is a tight loop between the classical computer used to submit
the results and then having the circuit run again. Sticking the public internet in
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Rivas says that Amazon customers will be able to avoid some of this lag time
thanks to recent improvements, which allow Rigetti to evaluate thousands of
circuits simultaneously and return the results to the customer’s classical
computer “on the order of milliseconds.” But he acknowledges that short of a
full switchover to quantum, the only way to avoid these lags completely is to
integrate quantum and classical systems, an achievement he thinks is decades
away. It doesn’t take a doctorate in physics to see that the prospect of two
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exclusively via quantum states will take decades—if it’s physically possible at all.
IBM scientist Stefan
Filipp takes a closer
look at the cryogenic
refrigerator that
will keep qubits
superchilled.