Australian scientists believe they have taken a key step towards building a silicon quantum computer – a device that could take quantum computing from hype to mainstream.
Silicon quantum computers marry quantum technology with the same element – silicon – used in existing computer chips, so can hopefully be easily mass-produced. Australia leads the world in the technology, which competes with at least eight other types of quantum computer.
But despite a decade of hype and billions of dollars in investment, quantum computing in general remains a long way off fulfilling its full promise, experts admit. At this stage, there are few uses for such a computer and scientists remain a long way from building a device that could calculate serious equations.
The Australian-led study, published on the front cover of leading journal Nature in January, shows silicon quantum computers can now be operated with better than 99 per cent accuracy.
“This has long been understood as the next big step you needed to take,” says Professor Andrea Morello of the University of NSW, who led the work.
Being 99 per cent-plus accurate seems a small achievement for a computer, but it’s a big deal in quantum because it is considered the threshold at which you could scale quantum processors into an actual computer, he says.
Hellbound and Down 