QuICS Fellow Discusses Current State of Quantum Computing

Daniel Gottesman, the Brin Family Endowed Professor in Theoretical Computer Science and a fellow in the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS), recently weighed in on the current state of quantum computing—and the challenges that lay ahead.

In an article published in Connected World, Gottesman and other quantum experts discussed the rapid increase in startups and funding by private industry and governments to bring fully functional quantum computers online. These experts also highlighted potential roadblocks, whether technical, financial or workforce related.

Despite all the recent investments, Gottesman said there are still quite a few hurdles for quantum computing to overcome.

“The thing that most concerns me moving forward is that while there has been a lot of progress in making more qubits, the leading designs haven’t made much progress toward better qubits, meaning ones with lower error rates,” he explained. “This is a problem because to get the full power of quantum computers, we will need to be able to correct hardware errors occurring during the computation, but we can only do this if the error rates are sufficiently low to start with. Otherwise, new errors occur faster than we can correct them.”

Gottesman said continued investment is needed for basic research on quantum topics. “This is a field that is still a long way from being able to reach its full potential and there are many things we don’t know,” he explained. “We also need a continued investment in education to ensure a workforce that is capable of building and programming quantum computers.”

—Story by UMIACS Communication Group. Click HERE to read the full article.