The race to build a full-blown quantum computer is heating up. Tech giant IBM has been working on error-correcting techniques for quantum hardware, and has now won funding from the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to take it to the next level.
Quantum computers promise to vastly outperform normal PCs on certain problems. But efforts to build them have been hampered by the fragility of quantum bits, or qubits, as the systems used to store them are easily affected by heat and electromagnetic radiation. IBM is one of a number of companies and research teams developing error-correcting techniques to iron out these instabilities.
Traditional technologies already make wide use of error correction. For example, a DVD stores data in the patterns of etched markings on its surface, and these markings are grouped in certain ways to reduce errors.
IBM is working on a similar technique for quantum computers, laying out qubits made from superconducting chips in a grid to allow a number of error-prone qubits act as a single, stable one, known as a logical qubit.
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