Studies reveal that although investments in quantum computing have significantly decreased, governments have continued to provide substantial financing.
More than 30 governments have committed to more than $40 billion in public funding for quantum technologies that will be implemented in the next ten years, according to the State of Quantum 2024 report from quantum computer specialist IQM, technology investor Lakestar, and venture capital firm OpenOcean.
The study also pointed out that the emergence of specialized quantum computing hubs and centers, along with national labs and centers for quantum computing, has sped up practical applications.
The report’s authors wrote: “In 2023, we saw the emergence of physical full-stack deliveries of quantum computers in national labs and quantum centers, as well as startups moving from the lab to the market as quantum technologies continued to advance beyond their theoretical statements to initial practicality.”
Global private investment in the quantum industry fell by 50%, despite the fact that enterprise users interested in or pursuing quantum technologies have doubled, according to the insights for 2023–2024. This was mostly caused by an 80% decline in investment in America; in contrast, investments in quantum computing increased by 3% in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The paper acknowledged the disconnection between the capabilities of many quantum computing systems at this time and the demands of industry today. End consumers seek clarity and openness in quantum computing roadmaps, and continued delivery of milestones is essential for building confidence and managing expectations,” the report’s authors noted.
Additionally, they think that problems like data security and “cost per functional computation hour” will emerge as the adoption barriers for quantum computing move beyond fault-tolerance and scalability. To support businesses in exploring quantum computation beyond theories and research questions, they are urging the industry to create more primitives and useful algorithms.
Tolerance For Faults
Several recent advancements indicate that error correction is getting better. These open the door to quantum computing, which may one day be used to resolve computationally difficult issues that are impractical to handle on a traditional computer architecture.
QuEra Computing, for example, unveiled in January a strategic roadmap for a line of error-corrected quantum computers that would begin in 2024 and end with a system that has 100 logical error-corrected qubits in 2026. Together with the research organization Inria, quantum hardware maker Alice & Bob has also developed a quantum error-correction architecture.
Based on earlier research using LDPC code—a class of effective error correction codes that lowers the amount of hardware needed to correct errors in information transfer and storage—the theoretical research discovered that 1,500 physical “cat” qubits—which are intended to lower so-called bit-flip errors in quantum computing—could be used to create 100 high-fidelity logical qubits.
Quantum Hybrid Computing In The Data Center
According to IQM Quantum Computers CEO and co-founder Jan Goetz, a hybrid quantum/HPC configuration solves two problems in data centre computing.
The first involves processing massive amounts of data, such as when high-frequency trading data is used to make well-informed financial judgments. Goetz refers to the second category of application cases as “very complex computing problems.”
Molecular modelings for drug discovery and flight path logistics optimization are two examples of these. “We are focusing our HPC integration efforts on reflecting this development,” he added. “The former is best suited for classical HPC methods, whereas the latter is where quantum machines can shine.”
The researchers referenced earlier estimates that demonstrated that, in theory, 350,000 cat qubits could be used to factorize RSA-2048 integers in four days. We calculate that the enhancements suggested in this paper would lower this figure to less than using the current hardware assumptions, 100,000 cat qubits, and seven days of computation,” they said.
“Over 90% of quantum computing value depends on strong error correction, which is currently many years away from meaningful computations,” said Jean-François Bobier, partner and director at the Boston Consulting Group. “By improving correction by an order of magnitude, Alice & Bob’s combined innovations could deliver industry-relevant logical qubits on hardware technology that is mature today.” According to Alice & Bob, the results show that the combination of cat qubits with classical LDPC codes produces a viable architecture for a large-scale quantum computer.
Cost was mentioned as another potential obstacle in the State of Quantum report. The report’s authors pointed out that one obstacle to quantum computing’s mainstream adoption is its high cost of computation time when compared to other high-performance computing systems.
“2023 was a year of steady technological progress resulting in larger qubit counts and initial error correction, as companies successfully published and followed quantum roadmaps,” stated Jan Goetz, CEO and co-founder of IQM Quantum Computers.
The algorithmic aspect is still less predictable, though. While anticipating the timeframes for software advancements is more reliant on hardware advancement, scaling processors is primarily an engineering task.
Amount For Practical Application
Quantum computing (QC) is a multidisciplinary field that combines computer science, physics, and mathematics. Its goal is to solve computational problems by utilizing the information processing capabilities of quantum mechanics.
Rival groups will create new quantum computer applications that tackle difficult, worldwide issues related to sustainability, health, and the climate, among other things. This is a critical juncture for quantum computing; come together with us to shape a future where technology confronts the most important global issues head-on.
Barrier
Quantum computers are not yet developed enough to solve societal issues in the real world that classical computers cannot. But as technology develops, comparatively few businesses and academics are concentrating on implementing quantum algorithms in practical settings and evaluating their viability to tackle global issues after powerful enough hardware becomes accessible.
Breakthrough
A future where a broad community of policymakers, business executives, and experts in quantum computing work together to discover and unleash the potential of quantum computing algorithms and applications to address some of the biggest issues facing humanity.
Incoherence.
Qubits are quite delicate and sensitive to their surroundings. Determining the qubit coherence length prior to the collapse of quantum characteristics is crucial since external noises have the potential to impact qubit properties.
Quantum Mistakes.
Low error rates are necessary for quantum computers to perform computations that are useful. To employ this technology practically, an error-correction strategy is needed for scaling quantum computer models.
The Absence of A Common Development Language.
Programming languages for quantum computers differ from those used for classical computers. As quantum computers become more prevalent in the hardware industry, there is a rush to create a common language.
Recommendation
In the oil and gas sector, quantum computing has great promise for finding novel materials, compounds, and industrial uses and processes in addition to tackling challenging challenges. A ten-year plan for using quantum computing technology will be crucial and important for future economic expansion.
The following are suggestions from Gartner for big oil and gas businesses looking to be among the first to use this technology.
Establish Local Quantum Proficiency.
Employ or develop a skill set in quantum physics. Making use of the quantum mechanics backgrounds of many geophysicists is essential. Additionally, businesses might work with nearby colleges to support graduate students who are interested in specializing in quantum computing.
Possible Uses
Quantum computing employs “an entirely different way to do computation, which potentially offers the opportunity to solve specific types of problems,” according to the IDC. The fields of optimization, chemistry, materials science, image analysis, drug development, machine learning, and code breaking will see the most business impacts from quantum computing.
Streamlining. Among other choices, quantum computing provides an ideal solution to a problem. As an illustration, consider extracting resources from mines, finding cost-effective methodology for financial services and shipping goods, and optimizing asset pricing and capital project budgeting.
Chemistry. Atomic quantum simulation will be made possible by quantum computing, which will be crucial in creating novel industrial and chemical processes that may open up new revenue streams for the petrochemical sector.
Science of Materials. Quantum computing can be used to examine complex atomic interactions. This could result in the identification of novel materials that are patentable, opening doors for early adopters in the oil and gas sector to expand economically.
Artificial Intelligence. Large-scale, complicated data sets could be processed by quantum computing and fed into deep learning and machine learning algorithms.
Customized Medical Care. It is possible to model atomic-level molecular interactions to discover novel cancer-fighting medications. The exact predictions made by quantum computing on the interactions between proteins may open up new avenues for the development of medical treatments.
Data protection. The potential of quantum computers to breach current cryptographic key-exchange protocols, such elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) and Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman (RSA), is one of its more significant uses. Because of the possible threat posed by quantum computers, the US National Security Agency has directed its staff members and suppliers to start verifying their encryption. To replace RSA and ECC, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is searching for other algorithms. According to NIST, recommendations for standardizing algorithms for quantum encryption are anticipated.
Think of Quantum Services in Computing. A few vendors, including IBM Q, Rigetti, and D-Wave, offer cloud-based capabilities and advise against implementing in-house solutions due to the immaturity of hardware techniques, the small scale of quantum systems, and the lack of business benefits when compared to the enormous expenditure required to purchase a single quantum computer.