IBM Research says it is nearing the minimum requirements for the creation of a practical, full scale quantum computer.
Quantum computers promise to leverage the underlying quantum mechanical behaviour of matter to deliver a leap in computational power, since they can work on millions of computations at once.
The announcement from IBM comes on the back of three new records achieved in the IBM labs. These pertain to reducing the error in elementary computations and retaining the integrity of quantum mechanical properties in quantum bits (qubits), which are the basic data carrying units in quantum computing.
IBM says by using superconducting qubits which use established microfabrication techniques developed for silicon technology, it could one day scale up to and manufacture thousands or millions of qubits.
According to IBM scientists, quantum computing is “no longer just a brute force physics experiment”.
“It's time to start creating systems based on this science that will take computing to a whole new level," said Matthias Steffen, manager of the IBM Research team for quantum computing.
3D Qubits
One of the great challenges for scientists seeking to harness the power of quantum computing is controlling or removing quantum decoherence. This is where heat, electromagnetic radiation and material defects cause errors in calculations.
Scientists have been experimenting for years to discover ways of reducing the number of errors and of lengthening the time periods over which the qubits retain their quantum mechanical properties. When this time is sufficiently long, error correction schemes become effective making it possible to perform long and complex calculations.
IBM has recently been experimenting with a "three dimensional" superconducting qubit (3D qubit), an approach first posited by researchers at Yale University.
The IBM team has used a 3D qubit to extend the amount of time that the qubits retain their quantum states up to 100 microseconds. This reaches just past the minimum threshold to enable effective error correction schemes.
In separate experiments, the group at IBM also demonstrated a more traditional "two-dimensional" qubit (2D qubit) device and implemented a two-qubit logic operation – a controlled-NOT (CNOT) operation.
Their operation showed a 95 percent success rate, enabled in part due to the long coherence time of nearly 10 microseconds. Again, these numbers are on the cusp of effective error correction schemes and will facilitate future multi-qubit experiments.
According to IBM, progress on quantum computing has been accelerating since 2009, and it could well see a practical quantum computer in the near future. However, such a system would includes a classical system connected to quantum computing hardware.
As such, the firm says the quantum computing community now must now consider systems integration aspects, such as assessing the classical information processing demands for error correction, I/O issues, feasibility, and costs with scaling.