Several companies, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Quantum Brilliance, as well as countries like Australia and China, are leading in quantum computing development, with different approaches to building and stabilizing qubits.

"IBM is a leading company in quantum computing development, with one of the world's largest quantum computers."

Countries leading in quantum computing development include Australia, the United States (with companies like Google, Microsoft, and IBM), and China, with various approaches being explored.

China and the United States are investing heavily in quantum computing, with China spending an estimated $15.3 billion in public funds on quantum research.

IBM is a leading company in quantum computing development, having achieved a milestone with the delivery of the first 1,000-qubit quantum chip in 2023.

China is the country investing heavily in quantum computing.

China is currently leading in the development of quantum computing, with significant government funding of $15.3 billion.

Australia is a leading country in quantum computing research, with significant government investment in the field.

"Quantum computing is expected to impact industries that rely on high computing accuracy, such as cryptography, optimization, and simulation."

Google demonstrated quantum supremacy with its 54-qubit Sycamore processor in 2019.

Quantum computing is being developed by various countries and companies, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, and the Chinese government, with different approaches being explored to overcome the challenges of maintaining qubit stability.

Finland's first operational quantum computer is a 5 quantum-bit computer, developed for research and learning purposes.

The US and Europe are investing heavily in quantum technology, with numerous labs and companies working on quantum computing.

China is leading in state funding for quantum technologies, with an investment of $15.3 billion in 2022, surpassing Europe and the United States.

Several companies, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Quantum Brilliance, as well as countries like Australia and China, are leading in quantum computing development, with different approaches to building and stabilizing qubits.

Title:

Content: Chandeliers, ‘qubits’ and Schrödinger’s cat: Inside the bizarre world of quantum computing

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Explainer

Chandeliers, ‘qubits’ and Schrödinger’s cat: Inside the bizarre world of quantum computing

In the quantum realm, the laws of physics are different. Now its mind-bending tech could soon transform our lives. How does it work?

It was 2009, and a group of scientists had crowded around a tiny monitor in a Sydney physics laboratory. The team, led by electrical engineer Andrea Morello, held their collective breath and peered at a single flat line on the screen. Then, in the blink of an eye, the line changed: it was a series of blips, like a heartbeat. They’d hit paydirt. “When you see that symbol, you’re in the game,” recalls physicist Charles Tahan.

Welcome to the quantum world, a subatomic realm – yes, smaller than an atom – where the laws of physics are, well, different. The experiment made Morello and his team the first in the world to show that a quantum computer could be made using not diamonds, not the superconductor niobium, but everyday silicon. “To show you could do that, 100 different things had to go right,” says Tahan.

Quantum computing is one of the key technologies defining this century. Its proponents say it will do for computers what the car did to the horse and buggy. It will upend encryption and molecular biology. In theory, it could even possibly find cures for cancer. Australia is among the world leaders in a quantum computing gold rush, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying his government is “serious about building a strong quantum ecosystem” and investing nearly a billion dollars.

Yet despite eye-watering outlays worldwide, quantum computing is still in its infancy, part of a mind-bending world that physicists are only beginning to fully grasp. What is it? And how will it make a difference to our lives?

How does a quantum computer work (and why did Alice in Wonderland have the jump on it?)

It’s often remarked that it looks like a beautiful chandelier, or a wedding cake. And IBM’s quantum computer, one of the world’s largest, is certainly an intriguing object, an intricate dome of golden wires and graceful tubes suspended from a ceiling.

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The part we can see, though, is really just the control and support system for a microchip (currently a version called Condor) buried deep inside. The glittering exoskeleton is there to keep its tiny heart as cold as possible – a hundred times colder than the coldest depths of space – and to feed information in and out, the process that makes it a “computer” and not just a science experiment.

The chip itself is smaller than a postage stamp, with several layers of circuitry and metal sandwiched in a tiny square, cooled to improve conductivity and to eliminate “noise”, the bugbear of many such devices. But even what we see here is not where the action happens. For that, we have to go deeper still, down into the chip and well beyond what’s visible through even the most powerful microscope, beyond the layers of individual atoms, into the atoms themselves.

‘The truth is the universe doesn’t run by the rules that we see every day – gravity, you bounce a ball and it falls. It runs on these other rules: quantum mechanics.’

In the subatomic realm of electrons, protons and photons, things happen very differently. Indeed, these tiny particles have no use for Newton’s laws of physics, nor even many of Einstein’s. “The truth,” says Tahan, “is the universe doesn’t run by the rules that we see every day – gravity, you bounce a ball and it falls. It runs on these other rules: quantum mechanics.”

Why these particles behave as they do in the quantum realm is a difficult concept to get your head around. Even Einstein resisted aspects of it, famously arguing that “God does not play dice with the Universe”. It was a misstep. “Because he didn’t believe in the completeness of quantum mechanics,” says Morello, “he lost a lot of productive years because he didn’t understand how it is possible that this thing is true.”

Many leading physicists investigated the concept from the early 1900s, including some familiar from popular culture today, notably Einstein and Neils Bohr (portrayed in Oppenheimer), Werner Heisenberg (whose name Walter White stole for his drug-chemist alter ego in Breaking Bad) and Viennese physicist Erwin Schrödinger, of the famous cat experiment (explained below).

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Lewis Carroll, meanwhile, may have had the jump on quantum physics with his ideas in the Alice books, as James Renner observed in The Wall Street Journal in 2015. “We speak of going down the wormhole into a mysterious world that defies Newtonian physics, where once Alice went down the rabbit hole into a mysterious world that had much the same effect. Now we speak of quantum particles being in two places at once or even Schrödinger’s cat being alive and dead at the same time, long after the Cheshire Cat’s grin was magically displaced from its body.”

The quantum realm has only truly begun to reveal itself to us relatively recently. In 1964, the Irish-born physicist John Bell published one of the most important theorems, which, according to Professor Andrew Whitaker in Physics World, “opened up the possibility of experimental philosophy, the study of what are normally thought of as philosophical issues in experiments. Not only do these experiments probe the deepest and most profound aspects of quantum theory, they also provide information on the fundamental nature of the universe.”

At the time, Bell’s theorem could not be tested in a lab. That would come in the late 1960s and early 1970s when experimentalists such as John Clauser began to show that the weirdness Bell had described on paper actually occurred in the real world. Which, at the time, was considered quite rude. One eminent physicist “was highly offended by my impertinent effort and told me that it was tantamount to professing a disbelief in quantum physics,” Clauser later recalled.

He and other apostates continued their work because he found some of the predictions “sufficiently bizarre that I could not accept them without seeing experimental proof”. Working with leftover lab equipment – “physics department scrap” – he went on to provide experimental evidence that refuted even Einstein’s theories. “I was very sad to see that my own experiment had proven Einstein wrong,” he said. Clauser would go on to win the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics alongside Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger for their groundbreaking experiments with so-called “entangled” particles.

Quantum physicists still despair at the difficulties of explaining their weird world to outsiders. “Many writers fall back on boilerplate that makes physicists howl in agony,” wrote computer scientist Scott Aaronson in The New York Times in 2019. Unfortunately, says Gerard Milburn, a quantum physicist from the University of Queensland, “The quantum world lies beyond the reach of natural language.”

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But we’ll give it a go. Chiefly, particles in the quantum realm aren’t tied down to being in one place or state in the way bigger things are in the outside world, such as cats, which tend to be in one place at once. They obey different rules entirely. The first way to understand this oddness harks back to high-school science and how light can behave as both a particle and a wave. Photons – bursts of light – can act like ball bearings, with position and momentum. Yet light also behaves like a wave washing over a beach in a way that a ball bearing can’t. That’s a quantum physics party trick.

What is Schrödinger’s cat?

The most famous primer for quantum mechanics is the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, a mind experiment devised by Schrödinger in 1935. A hypothetical cat goes into a box with a vial of poison gas, which has a 50-50 chance of killing it. You close the box and can’t see inside. So, without opening the box, you can’t know whether the poison has killed the cat or not. Therefore, posited Schrödinger, puss is neither dead nor alive but both – until you open the box.

In quantum mechanics, this state is called “superposition”. It’s impossible to describe properly without a background in higher-level mathematics, which we lack, but it generally means not knowing whether, say, an electron is over here, or over there, or – cat-like – in both places at the same time. Another way of looking at it is to visualise a coin spinning on its side. Until it stops and lands on one side or another, it’s not heads or tails but both.

At least, kind of.

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“Every explanation we give in lay terms is in some way wrong,” says Stephen Bartlett, a theoretical quantum physicist and director of the University of Sydney Nano Institute. “People often say a quantum superposition is in the value zero and the value one at the same time. That’s sort of right, and sort of not right.” Says Morello: “This is where language is failing us, right? If you’re trying to say that in plain English, it sounds really weird. But if you actually think about, you know, the mathematics of it, and the actual physical embodiment of that, it actually makes perfect sense.” Suffice to say, a real cat cannot find itself in “superposition”: this is a state that can exist only in the subatomic world.

How is this useful (and what’s a qubit)?

In a conventional computer, information is encoded as voltages that pass around the system thanks to millions of tiny transistors – essentially, gates or switches that turn on and off. A quantum computer is similar except that instead of using transistors as switches it uses subatomic particles, such as electrons or photons, that can have many more states than simply on or off, according to their position, momentum, spin direction and polarisation. Once harnessed – and there are many ways of doing that – these particles-as-switches are called “qubits”, a play on the word “bit”, the smallest unit of data that a computer can process and store.

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Information can be encoded on qubits in various ways: for his computers, Morello uses silicon and strong magnetic fields like those found in MRI machines. “The stuff that I build in my lab is actually a small silicon chip the size of a fingernail,” he says, “but the whole infrastructure around it is quite fancy. It’s a very powerful refrigerator that cools down the chip to [just] above absolute zero.

Critically, qubits can relate to other qubits in a state called “entanglement”. This enables quantum computers to perform multiple calculations simultaneously – which is their superpower. Schrödinger described entanglement as “the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought”. Sceptical Einstein called entanglement “spooky action at a distance”. Gerard Milburn says entanglement is great for building a computer “because if you want to have all these switches, having them strongly correlated is exactly what you want. And if you can control those correlations, you can do computation.”

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It’s these characteristics that have scientists and engineers excited. Not because quantum computers will necessarily take over from the conventional miracles we so rely on today but because they can do some particular things that transistor-based machines either struggle with or fail at completely. Today’s supercomputer might try to simulate molecular behaviour with “brute force”, says IBM’s quantum department. “But as it moves past the simplest, most straightforward molecules available, the supercomputer stalls. Quantum algorithms take a new approach to these sorts of complex problems, creating multidimensional computational spaces.”

‘Calculations that are completely impossible … would rapidly become possible on a quantum computer.’

This might include modelling how a drug might affect a virus, how new materials in aeroplanes might react to stress, or the exact process necessary to create a perfect chemical reaction.

“Calculations that are completely impossible – not just on present-day conventional computers but any conceivable future conventional computer – would rapidly become possible on a quantum computer,” says Andrew Doherty, professor of physics at Sydney University. “These are things where the application of that computer would be transformative to people’s lives without every home, you know, having a laptop quantum computer.”

Whether quantum computing will also revolutionise artificial intelligence is less certain. AI works by drawing from a huge amount of data, which is not something that naturally fits on a quantum computer, says Morello. “The problem with quantum computers in general and, in particular, with applications to AI is that loading data into them and reading data out of them is slow and cumbersome and prone to errors. It’s a bottleneck.”

Why is it so hard to build quantum machines?

Creating the qubits is hard, whatever material you start with. Interfacing with them via tiny wires like the golden lattice in IBM’s machines is hard. Getting accurate information from them is hard: “noise”, in the form of vibration or spurious electromagnetic signals, makes them behave badly and give poor results – “decoherence”, in physics speak.

Much of Andrew Doherty’s team’s work these days is in figuring out how to reduce this noise to acceptable levels and compensating for the errors that noise produces. “Compared to our conventional computers, quantum technology [computers] are very noisy devices,” he says. “They go wrong one time in 1000 as opposed to one time in an astronomically huge number of uses of [normal computers].”

Teams around the world are working on multiple approaches both to building the machines and compensating for their eccentricities, from labs in Australia to the tech giants Google, Microsoft and IBM – its Quantum Lab relies on superconducting qubits made from aluminium and niobiumand the Chinese government.

Some versions, such as IBM’s and Morello’s, chill the atoms to keep them as stable as possible. In contrast, the Australian company Quantum Brilliance is working with synthetic diamonds because they work at room temperature. “Unlike other materials,” says co-founder Marcus Doherty (no relation to Andrew), “diamond’s incredible hardness means that even at room temperature, there isn’t enough thermal energy in the environment to create vibrations that destroy the quantum properties of qubits.”

‘People are working really hard to try to find different mathematical problems that they think maybe quantum computers can’t crack.’

Another key moment in the quantum timeline came in 1994 when US mathematician Peter Shor showed that a quantum computer could crack encryption standards safeguarding everything from national intelligence systems to bank accounts. “He devised an algorithm, in theory, that he would need to run on a quantum computer,” says Bartlett. “And if you could build a quantum computer of sufficient size, then yeah, all information security falls apart.” Cybersecurity experts call that scenario Q-Day. “At the moment, people are working really hard to try to find different mathematical problems that they think maybe quantum computers can’t crack,” says Bartlett.

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In 2001, IBM made a seven-qubit device controlled through radio frequency pulses to demonstrate Shor’s Theorem. IBM’s prototype wasn’t given a huge task, managing to calculate that three times five was … wait for it ... 15. Yet this was considered a great success, even if it had shades of the famous supercomputer Deep Thought from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which ponders the question of “life, the universe and everything” for thousands of years before giving the answer: 42.(Adams also dreamed up the Infinite Improbability Drive for a spaceship called the Heart of Gold, which used quantum theory to allow it to cross through every point in the universe simultaneously, allowing interstellar travel without all that “tedious mucking about in hyperspace”.)

Then, in 2019, Google claimed its 54-qubit Sycamore processor had performed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years – a breakthrough some breathlessly likened to the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903. Others were more sceptical, saying it would be many more years before quantum computers would have enough qubits – and be stable enough – to do anything actually useful. IBM said it could simulate Google’s experiment in two-and-a-half days on a “normal” computer, albeit if it had access to the Oak Ridge Summit supercomputer, a beast occupying an area the size of two basketball courts. IBM’s shimmering Eagle, meanwhile, had just 127 qubits; its successors, Osprey and now Condor, have pushed the bar to over 1000 and it plans for 1386 qubits in its Kookaburra in 2025.

Yet most of these devices are still basically proofs of concept, says Morello, the first step to manufacturing and miniaturising, as we saw with today’s transistor-based computers, which started out as rooms full of valves and cables. In the post-World War II era, says Andrew Doherty, “computers took up office floors of buildings in Manhattan and people put paper cards into them to program them. Out came numbers that even my childhood pocket calculator could have calculated right.” Many hundreds of billions of dollars have gone into developing computer technology, in packaging it for convenience and getting the components to work reliably, he says. “That whole engineering thing has got to grow up around these quantum technologies.”

Already, Marcus Doherty’s Quantum Brilliance has installed a quantum computer at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth and is about to export computers, at this stage for customers to experiment with quantum computing and work out how to make it useful. In the future, finding commercial applications for a quantum computer will require tailoring it, at least initially, says UNSW’s Maja Cassidy, a former quantum researcher for Microsoft. “People have to go in and understand a company’s problem, how they’re using classical computing and … work out what section might be enhanced by the quantum computer.”

Who is leading the quantum race?

China is the only other nation giving the United States a run for its money. Its leader, Xi Jinping, put accelerating quantum technology in his 2021 five-year plan. McKinsey & Company estimates China has spent at least $15.3 billion in public funds on quantum research. That partly came to fruition in April with the Chinese Academy of Science’s unveiling of a 504-qubit chip, still half the size of IBM’s biggest.

For its part, Australia got a head start with quantum research in the 1990s. Today, two major spinoffs from UNSW research are pursuing silicon-based quantum computing: Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), led by Professor Michelle Simmons, and Diraq, led by Professor Andrew Dzurak. SQC’s approach involves embedding phosphorus atoms within a wafer of silicon. Dzurak’s approach involves trapping electrons on silicon transistors. Both have the advantage of silicon chips already being ubiquitous. “Today, in our phones and our laptops, the silicon chips that are in those have upwards of a billion transistors on them,” says Dzurak. “The benefit of the technology that we’ve developed is that we are also able to get millions, and ultimately billions, of quantum bits onto a single silicon chip.”

‘Computers as we know them today are an absolutely mind-blowing achievement. So any technology that has the ambition of being an alternative or being better than that has a phenomenally high bar to clear.’

Other leading players in Australia include Q-CTRL, which is working on controlling and enhancing quantum hardware; quantum security company QuintessenceLabs; and Doherty’s Quantum Brilliance, which used its synthetic diamonds in the world-first integration of a two-qubit quantum device into a supercomputer at room temperature in 2022.

Meanwhile, out of the University of Queensland came early gains in “photonic” quantum computing, which harnesses particles of light – photons – as qubits. In April, the federal and Queensland governments jointly set aside $940 million in share purchases, grants and loans for PsiQuantum, a Silicon Valley company whose founders include Australian professors Jeremy O’Brien and Terry Rudolph. Unlike ions or electrons, photons are not charged, Bartlett says, so are not sent haywire by electromagnetic forces – but they are hard to manipulate and measure.

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Another approach involves “trapped ion” quantum computing, pursued by US company IonQ: physicists take an atom, flick off an electron so it is positively charged, then suspend the resulting ion within an electromagnetic field and manipulate the ion with lasers. But Bartlett says this approach will be hard to scale, given the technology to suspend millions of ion qubits doesn’t yet exist.

In April, the federal government also announced $18 million for the University of Sydney to establish Quantum Australia, a research consortium between several universities headed by Bartlett. “It used to be a small research community,” he says. “You absolutely needed to speak the common language of everyone else, which were the rules of physics. Now we are really seeing quite a bit of specialisation.”

Even if quantum computers develop practical uses, they will likely live in vast, super-cooled server farms where land and power are cheap. We’ll communicate with them through our everyday devices, much as we download and upload data from cloud servers, Netflix, TikTok, DropBox, whatever, today. The real challenge for quantum computing, says Morello, is that the alternative is “really, really good”. “Computers as we know them today are an absolutely mind-blowing achievement. So any technology that has the ambition of being an alternative or being better than that has a phenomenally high bar to clear.”

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What are important areas in quantum research?

"IBM is a leading company in quantum computing development, with one of the world's largest quantum computers."

What are important areas in quantum research?

What companies are leading in developing quantum computing?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?

What have been the landmark achievements in quantum computing?

IBM's world's first integrated quantum computing system, IBM Quantum System One

What seminal quantum computers/ processors have been developed?

IBM's 1,121 Quantum Condor
20-qubit "IBM Q System One"
IBM's Eagle
IBM's 65-qubit Hummingbird

Countries leading in quantum computing development include Australia, the United States (with companies like Google, Microsoft, and IBM), and China, with various approaches being explored.

What companies are leading in developing quantum computing?

China and the United States are investing heavily in quantum computing, with China spending an estimated $15.3 billion in public funds on quantum research.

How much have countries and blocs invested in quantum computing?

IBM is a leading company in quantum computing development, having achieved a milestone with the delivery of the first 1,000-qubit quantum chip in 2023.

Title:

Content: 3 Quantum Computing Stocks That Could Grow Your Wealth

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  • Quantum computing stocks offer growth potential in emerging technology.
  • IBM (IBM): Leader in quantum systems development, focusing on miniaturization and accuracy.
  • Intel (INTC): Applying transistor-based design to quantum computing with silicon spin qubits.
  • IonQ (IONQ): Developing trapped ion quantum systems with strong technological advantages.

Quantum computing stocks are working toward creating and selling quantum computers and other quantum products. These technologies are based on principles of quantum mechanics. This includes superposition and entanglement to perform operations that a classical processor cannot. These stocks provide a way to enter a field expected to transform many industries.

Thus, investing in quantum computing stocks is quite promising, considering the development of the industry. Some of the breakthroughs in quantum computing hardware include the creation of superconducting qubits and error correction software for larger quantum computers. There has been progress in increasing the qubit coherence times and combining classical and quantum computing to solve real-life problems.

Many of these quantum computing stocks trade at reasonable valuations. Now is a great time for investors to consider these options to grow their wealth. So here are three quantum computing stocks to consider.

IBM (IBM)

Source: shutterstock.com/LCV

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is one of the leading companies in the race toward quantum computing. It’s constantly pushing forward to create efficient quantum systems. The company’s delivery of the first 1,000-qubit quantum chip in 2023 proved incredible advancements are being made in this field.

What’s more, IBM’s approach has changed significantly since the company decided to focus on the miniaturization of quantum chips and their increased accuracy rather than increasing the number of qubits. While quantum computing still has a long way to go before it is practically usable, it has the potential to be used in fields such as cryptography, optimization, and simulation. This is where computing accuracy is paramount.

Thanks to its technical competence, cooperation with other industries, and conceptual approach to the development of quantum computing, IBM has the potential to lead the way forward.

Financially and technically, IBM pays a solid and growing dividend and has a low beta, making it a defensive pick in one’s portfolio.

Intel (INTC)

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has become one of the frontrunners in the race to build quantum computers through the application of transistor-based design and semiconductor manufacturing. Thus, by transferring the methods for creating and verifying conventional chips to silicon-based quantum computers, Intel has made a significant leap forward in its creation.

This is because the company is using silicon spin qubits, which are somewhat similar to the familiar semiconductor transistors. This allows the company to use its advanced CMOS fabrication facilities to place millions or even billions of these qubits on a single chip.

Intel’s progress in developing a 12-qubit silicon chip on a 300mm wafer with an impressive 95% yield rate proves its capacity to meet the stability standards of quantum computers. Also, Intel has perfected the cryogenic wafer probing technique. This allows it to test its quantum devices and make necessary adjustments faster.

INTC could be one of the top quantum computing stocks to consider to include an award-winning brand your portfolio.

IonQ (IONQ)

IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) is a leading developer of quantum computing systems using trapped ions. This approach could potentially enhance the reliability of its quantum computations.

IonQ has a strong technological advantage and owns 74 US-issued patents and 163 pending applications covering its quantum computing solutions. It is also engaged in the process of developing its quantum hardware for the commercial market, through which is available on the major cloud platforms and has signed several strategic partnerships,

One of the best things about IONQ is its financials are in good shape. This is more than what can be said for other companies that are exploring more experimental strategies.

As per its Q1 results, IonQ has high gross margins and increasing orders for quantum systems. The company expects to achieve net income before seeking more capital and thus prepare for long-term development. These factors make IONQ one of those quantum computing stocks to buy.

On the date of publication, Matthew Farley did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Matthew started writing coverage of the financial markets during the crypto boom of 2017 and was also a team member of several fintech startups. He then started writing about Australian and U.S. equities for various publications. His work has appeared in MarketBeat, FXStreet, Cryptoslate, Seeking Alpha, and the New Scientist magazine, among others.

Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2024/07/3-quantum-computing-stocks-that-could-grow-your-wealth/.

©2024 InvestorPlace Media, LLC

What are important areas in quantum research?

What companies are leading in developing quantum computing?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?

China is the country investing heavily in quantum computing.

Title:

Content: US-China technology war threatens scientific progress
US-China technology war threatens scientific progress
The world is currently witnessing an escalating technological war between the United States and China, while Europe is also participating in it, but only timidly, as its efforts to maintain technological supremacy decline due to stagnation in this area.
As the major powers in that war seek to protect themselves from technological dependency, it could threaten the world ’ s progress and prosperity by fragmenting it into competing technological worlds.
Hiba Muhyi
German writer Wolfgang Hearn published a book in 2024 entitled “The Technological War between China and the United States and the European Position on Competition ”, in which he discusses the historical role of these major powers in supporting the march of technological progress, and the most important technological fields that are grappling with, especially quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and others, as well as the dangers of this conflict and the feasibility of cooperation between powers in the technological field.
The book traces the knowledge and technological contributions of the United States, China and Europe, noting that Washington established modern global technological development when the Second Industrial Revolution began with the discovery of electricity and the Third Industrial Revolution with the introduction of computers.
This was followed by innovations such as the Internet and electronic chips.
According to a report published by the Future Institute for Advanced Studies and Research, this American success is due to the availability of elements of knowledge (universities and research bodies) and capital.
China contributed to historical technological development during the period (960 – 1279 AD) through the invention of paper, printing art, powder gunpowder and magnetic compass, followed by a rapid decline due to, inter alia, the Opium Wars, the end of the Empire, and civil wars, until China intensified efforts to achieve a slow recovery beginning in 1978, and then a strong rise during the last two decades.
Europe experienced the first industrial revolution a hundred years ago, as it pioneered natural sciences and medicine at the time, but there is now a marked decline in several technological areas when compared to Beijing and Washington, and this affected leading European industries, such as the automotive industry; where leading companies, such as Volkswagen, lag in the areas of autonomous and automated driving.
The book offers several technological areas in which conflicts between major powers arise, as follows:
Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence applications aim to simulate the human mind in its patterns of thinking and processing of data, which makes the performance of complex tasks entrusted to it.
The United States provides support to companies involved in this field, resulting in the launch of ChatGT in 2022, which can be used to obtain high-quality and accurate answers on various topics.
China has banned the app and created its latest emulator, Ernie Bot, which was launched in 2023.
European efforts to invest in artificial intelligence appeared disappointing, with the German minister of research presenting a plan of action aimed at investing about 1.6 billion euros by 2025 in the field.
Semiconductors or electronic chips are used in various low-tech devices, from washing machines to missiles, a US invention that emerged in the 1950s, but two companies currently monopolize the field: Samsung in South Korea and TSMC in Taiwan, and Beijing, Washington and Europe cannot compete, at least in the near term.
Digital transformation: Digital transformation aims to embed technological technologies into business and social processes and interactions.
Washington and Beijing dominate this area, the first is the main founder of the four Internet giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, while the second contributed three rival giants, namely: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, while Europe is at the bottom of the list of leading companies such as: Zalando and Otto.
Quantum computing and quantum theory: The field of quantum computing is based on combining disciplines, such as computer science, physics and mathematics, using quantum theory to achieve sophisticated analytical processing of data that ordinary computers cannot process with the same speed and accuracy.
This contributes to breakthroughs in many fields, such as medicine, by making it possible to diagnose and treat diseases cheaply such as Alzheimer ’ s, epilepsy and Parkinson ’ s.
It also alters war strategies by creating a radar based on quantum technologies that can track and locate an adversary.
China tops the list of investors in this new technology.
According to U.S. consulting firm McKinsey, Chinese investment reached $15.3 billion in 2022.
It was followed by Europe with $7.2 billion and the United States with $3.7 billion.
• Energy generation: States are seeking to exploit technology to provide promising and safe ways to generate energy from it, nuclear fusion (the production of an artificial sun), which is based on the idea of merging two light atomic nuclei of hydrogen isotopes such as deuterium and tritium to produce one heavier atomic nucleus of a new element, helium, as happens on the surface of the sun.
This fusion is accompanied by the emission of four times the amount of energy produced by nuclear fission reactions.
However, there are obstacles to the actual implementation of this technology, such as the need to provide high temperatures of up to 100 million degrees Celsius to ensure that no long-term greenhouse gases or radioactive waste is produced.
Despite the difficulty of using fusion in power generation in the near future until 2050, countries are sparing no effort to develop this technology; China has developed several nuclear fusion reactors, the latest of which is the advanced experimental Tokamak designed to provide temperatures of up to 120 million degrees Celsius in 2022.
The United States is also interested in supporting related research and partnering with Japan this year to accelerate nuclear fusion development.
Europe is also making concrete efforts in this area through the joint European-Japanese project JT-60SA in 2022.
Biotechnology and medicine: applications of digital health care, genetic foods, and genetic scissors (Chris BR), which refers to a technique used to cut and modify DNA in a targeted way; genes can be inserted, removed, or disabled, whether in plants, animals, or humans; making its use ethically accountable, especially if applied to humans.
China uses it in agriculture to ensure the production of genetic foods and provide needed food for its people, while the United States approved the first treatment for sickle cell disease late last year, and the use of the technology in Europe faces strict legal rules according to the judgment of the European Court of Justice in 2018.
Space travel: The United States, China and Russia have paid special attention to space by sending missions and spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.
But competition between Washington and Beijing has now subsided as Moscow has been hit by financial crises.
The technological impulse of Washington and Beijing supports the economic impulse in this area: the need to mine space and reveal its resources that can be used, and for Europe it does not yet have an ambitious and practical policy to invade space.
Patents and people: The United States tops the list, with its universities, research centers and capital, while China filed nearly 3 million patents in 2023, of which only 10 percent were accepted.
Germany is a European power in the field of patents, but has been in decline recently, according to the German government ’ s report on the future strategy for research and innovation.
Because the human element is the most important link in the development of technology and the registration of patents, the major powers take several ways to prepare the human element, especially in the fields of mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology, but suffer a huge gap between supply and demand.
But China has two competitive advantages: huge numbers graduate each year from universities, and an active policy of sending students and scientists abroad to study and train and then calling them back when needed.
According to the book, the technological struggle between major powers cannot be confined to the former; there are other promising areas.
In the military field, combat drones and autonomous military robots can be built that make decisions on the battlefield autonomously without the need for human intervention.
At the urban level, smart cities can be created that rely on the Internet of Things to do their functions quickly and with a high degree of accuracy, such as facilitating traffic in those cities, rationalizing the energy used and environmental monitoring for any potential environmental risks.
Technology cooperation between China, the United States and Europe is crucial, especially in the circumstances of climate change, energy crises and migration, especially as the continuation of the technological war will lead to a global rise in prices, a decline in welfare rates and a decline in global total production by 7 percent, according to economists at the International Monetary Fund.
It is expected that the current technological war between Beijing and Washington will lead to technical fragmentation, as two different technological worlds, one American and the other Chinese, may arise, as has already happened with the Internet, resulting in increased costs for consumers and producers and a slowdown in the desired development to prevent the exchange of knowledge and technology between the two worlds.
While the writer understands the need for countries to protect their economies and technological progress from falling into the trap of dependence, the solution is to take an approach aimed at reducing those risks by diversifying relations with many international actors and forming alliances rather than cutting trade and technology ties, as happened between the United States and China in the trade war launched by former US President Donald Trump.
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How much have countries and blocs invested in quantum computing?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?

What have been the landmark achievements in quantum computing?

China's "Jiuzhang-2" quantum supremacy experiment

China's "Zu Chongzhi-2" quantum supremacy experiment

What seminal quantum computers/ processors have been developed?

China's 113-qubit Jiuzhang 2.0
China's 72-qubit Origin Wukong

China is currently leading in the development of quantum computing, with significant government funding of $15.3 billion.

Title:

Content: Investments in quantum computing startups reached $2.35 billion in 2022
Quantum technologies have great potential for both science and business, and attract large investments in different countries of the world, including Russia.
This is stated in the analytical report "Quantum Computing: Prospects for Business", which was prepared jointly with the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "VNIIA named after N.L. Dukhov" and the Institute of Artificial Intelligence AIRI.
“Increasing attention in the world is paid to supporting start-ups in the field of quantum technologies.
In 2022, venture investors around the world invested $2.35 billion in them.
Also last year, almost 1,600 patents were issued and published in all subfields of quantum computing: from physical implementations of quantum equipment and error correction to AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning.
Video of the day
Leading countries, realizing the breakthrough potential of this direction, include quantum technologies in national programs and allocate increasing budgets for research.
The leader is China with $15.3 billion in government funding.
Development programs have the leading technological corporations of the world.
So, which has made a quantum processor for 433 qubits [qubit or quantum bit - the main unit of information in quantum processors and quantum computing], plans this year to increase the number of qubits to 1121, and intends to show a device for a thousand qubits after 2025.
The intention to develop a full stack of technologies for quantum computing announced and has already released to the market quantum chips on spin qubits.
In Russia, work on quantum computing is underway on four key physical platforms: superconducting qubits, photonic circuits, neutral atoms, and trapped ions.
The Russian Federation has also formed a pool of organizations, including companies, scientific institutions and universities that conduct research and development, study the applicability of quantum computing to practical tasks.
“Quantum computing can give the world an impetus to the development of new industries based on the processing of big data.
In addition, they can improve the performance and efficiency of artificial intelligence algorithms, the accuracy of models and simulations of complex systems (such as molecules of new drugs, chemical reactions or physical processes), as well as provide a new level of calculations in finance and logistics, new solutions to climate problems and cryptographic algorithms that will provide a higher level of security.
The authors of the report come to the conclusion that although no one in the world has been able to demonstrate practical quantum superiority, nevertheless, companies should plan today what will happen after its achievement.
Quantum computing is able to integrate seamlessly into data processing workflows, using adaptation tools for popular programming languages and interfaces.

How much have countries and blocs invested in quantum computing?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?

Australia is a leading country in quantum computing research, with significant government investment in the field.

"Quantum computing is expected to impact industries that rely on high computing accuracy, such as cryptography, optimization, and simulation."

What advantages do quantum computers have over conventional computers?

extremely complex calculations
extremely fast calculations

What are the potential threats of quantum computers?

threatening national security through breaking encryption

What fields can quantum computers advance?

Google demonstrated quantum supremacy with its 54-qubit Sycamore processor in 2019.

What are important areas in quantum research?

What companies are leading in developing quantum computing?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?

What have been the landmark achievements in quantum computing?

Google's Sycamore quantum supremacy experiment

Quantum computing is being developed by various countries and companies, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, and the Chinese government, with different approaches being explored to overcome the challenges of maintaining qubit stability.

What are important areas in quantum research?

What are the challenges in quantum computing research?

Finland's first operational quantum computer is a 5 quantum-bit computer, developed for research and learning purposes.

Title:

Content: Finland has big plans for quantum computing applications

The QuTI project will develop new components, manufacturing and testing solutions, and algorithms for the needs of quantum computing applications.
25 January 2022

Quantum computing applications are expected to be adopted by more industries this year as organizations around the world begin testing the use cases for the technology. While organizations are the ones most looking forward to making the most of the technology, a few governments are also hoping quantum computing applications can improve their services.

In Finland, their first-ever quantum computer was commissioned at a research center near the capital. Scientists are expected to use it to study next-generation computing power. The 5 quantum-bit computers were developed to learn how to build a quantum computer, how to program one, and how to operate one in the future.

The state-owned VTT Technical Research Center (VTT) plays a crucial role in ensuring researchers learn in a range of scientific domains and making quantum computing applications ready for the industry. According to a report by Computer Weekly, the Finnish government believes that the best way to be ready for the quantum computing industry is to build a working quantum computer.

Computer Weekly also highlights five areas for quantum computing applications. They are in drug and materials discovery, supply chain and logistics, financial services, artificial intelligence, and cloud security.

For drug and materials discovery, Computer Weekly reports that a separate team in VTT which is the quantum algorithm team is developing algorithms to be used on the quantum computer. They are looking at two broad types of quantum computing applications. The first is to solve complex optimization problems that exist in many industries. This includes energy distribution, process control, and fleet management. The second is to predict the structures and properties of molecular formations more accurately and effectively. This will help accelerate drug discovery and the development of new materials.

While other countries are also developing quantum computer ecosystems, with the majority focusing on topics and platforms. Tech vendors like IBM and Google, who are also developing quantum use cases are not government-linked or owned and are mostly testing industry use cases.

Compared to the rest of the world, Finnish researchers focus almost exclusively on the superconducting qubit approach, which they have been using for years and know very well. In fact, a new research project has just been launched to accelerate the progress of Finnish quantum technology.

The QuTI project, coordinated by VTT, will develop new components, manufacturing and testing solutions, and algorithms for the needs of quantum technology. The QuTI consortium, partly financed by Business Finland, consists of 12 partners and has a total budget of around EUR 10 million.

For Professor Mika Prunnila, QuTI project’s coordinator, from VT, “Quantum technology is a multidisciplinary and rapidly advancing field. The QuTI consortium provides an ideal starting point for strengthening the international competitiveness of Finnish technology and industry in this fast-growing field.”

The quantum computing, communication and sensing devices to be developed in the QuTI project are largely based on expertise in microsystems, photonics, electronics, and cryogenics. The project develops customized software and algorithms hand in hand with the hardware, strengthening the Finnish quantum computing infrastructure. In addition, new tools will be created for quantum technology product development that will serve the needs of the QuTI project as well as the entire field of quantum technology.

As China and the US continue to battle each other for quantum computing supremacy, Finland is definitely building their presence in the industry as well. With the government supporting quantum computing initiatives, Finland might just have a quantum computing ecosystem on the horizon.

What are important areas in quantum research?

What are the challenges in quantum computing research?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?

The US and Europe are investing heavily in quantum technology, with numerous labs and companies working on quantum computing.

Title:

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India is not too late in quantum computing: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research's Rajamani Vijayaraghavan

Investment in quantum tech has crossed $36 billion globally. It is billed to be the next big thing in tech after semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) scientist says India is lagging, but can catch up

April 06, 2023 / 11:23 AM IST

Professor Rajamani Vijayaraghavan

When Professor Rajamani Vijayaraghavan was not present at a quantum tech conference in New Delhi last week, he was missed by his peers.

As scientists, bureaucrats, military officers and startup executives gathered for a conversation on the way forward for India’s quantum technology ambitions, the general feeling was that Vijayaraghavan should have been there.

Quantum computing taps the unique behaviour of quantum physics to solve certain problems that are too complex for traditional computing.

If semiconductor technology was the first giant leap in computing and Artificial Intelligence is the current disruptor, it is probably going to be quantum technology next. Quantum computing, conceived by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the early 1980s, was mostly studied in university labs in the US and Europe until the turn of the millennium.

As advances took place, tech behemoths like Google, International Business Machines (IBM) and Intel threw their hat in the ring with billions of dollars in investment. According to an estimate, China has invested $15 billion even as global funding in the technology has topped $36 billion.

At the New Delhi conclave last week, a senior defence official said the wars of the future will be fought on the quantum front. While sizeable quantum computers do not yet exist, the fear among governments and industry is that it will be a Y2K moment once the technology comes to life.

Apart from strategic affairs, quantum tech is also expected to play a central role in areas like drug discovery, financial modelling, weather forecasting and fighting climate change.

Moneycontrol spoke with Professor Vijayaraghavan, a quantum computing scientist at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) who returned to the country a decade ago after studying at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Berkeley, to take stock of India’s progress in the area.

Edited excerpts:

At the quantum tech conclave in Delhi last week, it seemed as though most Indian quantum start-ups are working on secure communications rather than quantum computing. Why so?

See, in terms of the technology required for doing quantum key distribution (for secure communications), or associated areas like quantum random number generators, it is now fairly well developed internationally. Also, the essential tools and core pieces of hardware and things you need are relatively low-cost and easily available, compared to quantum computing.

If you shift to quantum computing, even if you just take a very basic estimate, it needs about a million dollars just to set up a very basic lab. This was the kind of funding that was given to me when I started in TIFR about 10 years ago, just to have a very basic setup and do simple experiments.

I'm not even talking about the resources you need to develop prototypes and technology. And even this $1 million is an underestimate, because there are other facilities, which were already existing in the institute for device fabrication, clean rooms, and other tools. If I count all of those, then you are talking about a couple of million dollars, at the very least, to get started.

Now, of course, a company could hire these resources from other places. But such facilities don't exist in India, and as of now, even internationally, they are limited, where a company with no infrastructure of their own, but just the idea and expertise could go to a place and say, hey, you know, here is my design, manufacture this for me, and we will put it together.

Experts say that India first missed the bus in taking a lead in semiconductor technology and now even in artificial intelligence. They say it is now or never if we want to be leaders in quantum computing. What is your take?

I broadly agree with it, but let me expand on that. Before something becomes close to technology, there is decades of basic research where they are not even thinking about technology. I started my PhD in the year 2001, i.e. over 22 years back. And that was a turning point when the field of quantum computing was taking off. That was on the back of basic research in quantum computing from the 1980s.

It is absolutely true that if you want to do this, you have to do it now. And with this particular technology, we are not so far behind. Barring a few areas where things have sort of more or less been figured out, we still need several breakthroughs. Even though it looks like IBM has reached so many qubits (a qubit is the basic unit of information in quantum computing) and Google that many, they still don't have a useful quantum computer today. None of these quantum computers that exist anywhere in the world are really useful in the sense that they can replace something to do the work much better.

At how many qubits do you think we can solve real world problems better than existing supercomputers?

It really depends on what you mean by qubits. So there is this notion of physical qubits and logical qubits. The difference is that physical qubits are unstable. Unlike conventional bits in our regular computers, which are extremely stable, and you don't have to worry about them at all, these things are not stable. They actually randomly change their state and give rise to errors. And this happens over a certain timescale, which can be as short as 10s of microseconds or a few milliseconds.

Today’s quantum computers are essentially limited in how long you can use them, or essentially, what is the longest calculation you can run before you can't trust the results of what the computer is outputting. This is a fundamental problem across all quantum computing platforms today. There are some clear paths to solve this, but it is not clear which particular method would win.

And this is where I want to go back to my earlier point that India is not too late. If we invest now, we could create those breakthroughs that can make this technology useful. If enough people start working, and it's not just one or two people in the entire country, then you can hope that these breakthroughs can happen here. And then that will allow us to take a lead in some areas.

In your estimate, how many people are working on quantum computing in India vis-a-vis the US or other countries?

For superconducting qubit research, as of now, there are four people in India. I was the first one who started about 10 years ago, and then two others started maybe about six and four years ago, and one has just joined.

In the US, there are at least 20 or more academic labs, in addition to Google, IBM, or national labs like Fermilab, and I'm not even counting theoretical groups. Many of them have been working for over 20 years or so. And you know, similarly, in Europe, there will be at least 10 to 15 labs just in superconducting quantum computing.

If you look into some of the other subfields like trapped ion quantum computing, it's even smaller.

One of the major issues in advanced research is brain drain. Many of our best researchers still tend to settle abroad. Is more funding alone going to solve this to an extent? What tipped the scales for you to return?

Decisions about moving back to India can be very complicated, you know. There are all kinds of personal and professional reasons, but the point is very simple. You cannot attract someone to come to India to work in a field that requires a certain level of investment by telling them that we will not give it to you.

For me, I always wanted to come back to India and do something if it is possible. And once I finished my PhD, I started looking around and realised that there are lots of labs, which are fairly high-tech and at the cutting edge. Funding seemed to have improved in the previous few years or decade. It was important that I would be able to do the kind of research I was interested in doing rather than compromise. If that had not happened, I would have taken up a job abroad.

Has the funding scenario gotten better since then?

It's now becoming better, at least among the bigger institutes, but it's still quite a challenge. There is no real guarantee that you will get the kind of funding needed for experimental quantum research, and we are trying to solve this problem with the new funding programmes.

There is a reluctance to invest so much money in a new person. The idea of a startup grant is very clear in the West – your offer letter clearly says that you will get $1 million and you have to spend it in the next four to five years… everything is spelt out. We are not able to do that.  You have to keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.

This actually does pose a barrier to entry because it's not competitive. If I have offers from an Indian institute, where everything is ambiguous, and some other foreign Institute, where everything is clearly spelt out, then it is very difficult to make a decision in favour of the former. Unless, of course, there are personal reasons to be in the country.

It should be a much more streamlined process for the government to disburse funds now as many new advanced research and academic institutes have come up. What are we missing here?

Oh, no. It is not easy at all. The bigger institutes have some advantages in terms of flexibility of using their funds, but it is not easy to get big grants. Currently, the amount that you can get for a standard Department of Science and Technology (DST) project is Rs 10 lakh-50 lakh. That’s the typical range. Special programmes can provide bigger funding but they are rare.

Usually, it is easier to get big funding when a new institute is being built to set up new facilities. From thereon, things get tougher as you reach a steady state. Look, you need investment if you want to work in quantum tech. Of course, one can make a call that ‘Okay, we cannot afford this research, so we will not do it.’ But if you want to, there is no other option, you have to find ways to support this.

A few years back, the DST started a programme called QUEST (Quantum Enabled Science and Technology) where 50 scientists got funded with a combined funding of about Rs 200 crores. It was the first major effort in funding quantum tech research where an individual group could have hoped to get something of the order of Rs. 5 to 10 crore, which is the minimum you need to set up a lab working in quantum tech.

Was this part of the Rs 8,000 crore quantum national mission announced in the 2020 budget?

No, this was a different programme where the first discussions started in 2017 and the money started coming in  2019-2020. Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of the pandemic, when you know, things were shut, and we couldn't spend the money. On top of that, as part of the pandemic-related things, the government made it very difficult to import things.

The National Mission on Quantum Technology and Applications (NMQTA) with a proposed budget of Rs 8,000 crore is expected to launch sometime soon. Probably, you know, in the next few months. We have been working on it.

Can you tell us more about the import policy?

It was introduced in the summer of 2020. This was not a science policy. This was a government procurement policy. You know, on the face of it, it seems like a good idea. They wanted to encourage Indian industry and push for self-reliance. On paper, it sounds great. And it might even work for certain types of government procurement.

They're basically saying that if you're supported by government funds, you have to prioritise Indian-manufactured goods. And the way they implemented it is by saying that if something costs more than Rs 5 lakh and you want to import it, you have to go through a new procedure and get a waiver before you can even float a global tender.

In the beginning, we were surprised, and we said, okay, maybe they just didn't think about scientific procurement. So, in a few months, they will fix it but it didn't happen. It took about six to seven months before some exception was given. But there is no blanket exception given for scientific procurement.

They reduced the number of signatures required by one and made some exceptions. Unfortunately, even there, because of a lack of clarity, every institute has interpreted the rules differently. And we are definitely facing a lot of problems still. In the best-case scenario, we are still wasting about three months just to get approval to import an item.

Does most scientific procurement happen from abroad?

The problem is to assume that there is an Indian option and we are actively choosing not to use it. That is not the case for 99 percent or even more. It is a well-known fact that for scientific high-tech equipment, there is no manufacturing happening in India… there are no companies which exist. But, we have to now prove it with paperwork to get the waiver. Even if we invest Rs 8,000 crore, it won’t work if these kinds of policies are not fixed. We are wasting a bulk of the time just doing this paperwork, and not actually doing research.

It might be more fruitful if you create opportunities in the nation for companies to come together and manufacture at least some of the things in India. But, when you have not had a manufacturing base in a certain technology for decades, how can you start doing that overnight? And in many cases, it might not even make economic sense for a company because it's a niche market.

Is it possible for India to build an indigenous quantum computer?

In today's globalised world, nothing is going to be fully indigenous. For superconducting qubits, you can innovate the design of the chip and make it here, but the lithographic machines and dilution refrigerators have to come from outside.

There is a section which says we can just use quantum computing on the cloud that foreign tech companies provide. Isn’t there a possibility that the use cases of quantum on the cloud will be limited?

As I said earlier, none of the available quantum computers are doing anything useful better than classical computers at present. When it happens in the future, and it will, you might be able to use cloud-based systems for many applications. On one hand, we can continue to be just a leader in the software layer. One could decide that we will develop the best quantum software in the world, but we will never develop any hardware.

The problem really comes when you start talking about strategic applications – whether the cloud company will provide you with the best systems they have access to. That's the fundamental question we have to ask ourselves.

We don’t have a quantum computer, but startups are providing a solution called quantum key distribution (QKD) for secure communications. How do we know it is really secure if they have not been tested against a quantum computing hack?

QKD fundamentally relies on the fact that if somebody tries to interfere, you will know. And the trick in any secret communication is that if two parties can exchange a key without anybody else knowing, then the information you transmit using encoding based on that key is secure. Quantum key distribution is a method where the laws of physics guarantee that the key you have exchanged has not been intercepted by anybody else. Because the moment somebody intercepts, you will know and you will discard that key. It cannot be broken by even a quantum computer. So you don't need to test it against a quantum computer.

A bureaucrat was saying that enterprises are concerned that they might be sold classical computing solutions in the garb of quantum tech. So the government is trying to bring a quantum certification programme. Would it have the bandwidth to do such accreditation?

You have to look at this slightly differently. There are things in quantum which are impossible in classical. So if whatever you're purchasing is actually carrying out that task, it cannot do it the classical way. And if there are applications where both classical and quantum can do that, then it is unclear why you would bother unless there is a cost advantage or a performance advantage for the quantum solution.

As a business or an enterprise that wants some problem solved, you will put the problem statement, and the quantum company will say this is the solution. So, why do you care what is inside? The bureaucrat was probably referring to quantum communication systems where you want some central body to verify that the system is really secure and meets certain standards. I believe the government is setting up such bodies for various quantum technologies.

Deepsekhar Choudhury Deepsekhar covers tech and startups at Moneycontrol. Tweets at @deepsekharc

What are important areas in quantum research?

China is leading in state funding for quantum technologies, with an investment of $15.3 billion in 2022, surpassing Europe and the United States.

How much have countries and blocs invested in quantum computing?

What countries and blocs are leading in developing quantum computing?