The long-term vision for quantum computing is the ability to leverage millions of noise-free qubits to address selected problems that are hard to solve with classical computers. Application fields that may benefit from this technology include materials synthesis, pharmaceutical drug development, and cybersecurity, to name a few.
Various quantum computing platforms with diverse types of qubits are under investigation, and worldwide efforts are ongoing to scale up from hundreds to millions of qubits. Having different levels of maturity, each platform has its own needs for scaling up. Common challenges include well-controlled qubit integration in large-size wafer facilities and the need for electronics to interface with the growing number of qubits.
Superconducting quantum circuits have emerged as arguably the most developed platform. The energy states of superconducting qubits are relatively easy to control, and researchers have been able to couple more than a hundred qubits together. This enables an ever-higher level of entanglement—one of the pillars of quantum computing. Also, superconducting qubits with long coherence times (up to several 100µs) and sufficiently high gate fidelities—two important benchmarks for quantum computation—have been demonstrated in lab environments worldwide.
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