In the wild and wooly world of quantum computing, everything must be taken with a grain of salt.
For example, Microsoft’s (MSFT) comment that it will have a production-ready quantum computer in five years’ time—a comment made to this blog in February—is met with a pleasant smile and something of a shrug by James Clarke, the director of quantum hardware for Intel (INTC). I had lunch with Clarke on Thursday in Manhattan.
“If you look at the first transistors, they came out in about the late ’40s,” observes Clarke. “Then, in the late ’50s, came the first integrated circuits. It wasn’t until the late ’60s, or early ’70s, that you got the first microprocessors."
“It makes sense, then, that with something as complex as quantum, you’d be looking at another decade for it to reach maturity,” he says.
Clarke’s express purpose was not to shoot down Microsoft; he has great admiration, in particular, for Leo Kouwenhoven, a professor of applied physics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Kouwenhoven in fact formed the QuTech group at Delft that is partnering with Intel to make the chip giant’s quantum computing parts.
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