Quantum Computing Is Closer Than Ever. Everybody’s Too Busy to Pay Attention.

PsiQuantum says it will have a commercially useful quantum computer available as soon as 2027.

The Palo Alto, Calif., startup is working to build quantum computers in Australia as well as Chicago, where it will be the anchor tenant of the planned Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. And it is doing so by tapping into existing infrastructure used to build more conventional computers to help speed development, said Pete Shadbolt, a company founder and its chief scientific officer.

“That has really been our approach … to leverage the same fabs, the same contract manufacturers, as far as humanly possible the same networking and so on that is used in conventional data centers, conventional supercomputers,” said Shadbolt Tuesday at the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network Summit. “And we think that gives us a much faster path.”

Companies have long recognized the powerful technology’s potential in areas such as drug discovery, finance, energy, aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing. Some firms are already building their own quantum algorithms and running them over simulators and early-stage machines in preparation for the day a commercial-grade quantum machine is available. PsiQuantum is also working with customers to develop quantum software that will ultimately run on the hardware of the future.

“It is always going to be a very opaque, extreme technology which is used by a very limited set of technically elite people who are directly running code on the machine,” he said. But the products of those computations—designs for new materials or new drugs, for example—will have an impact on businesses from pharmaceutical to automotive, he added.

But tech leaders attending the Summit said they were more focused on other priorities, including getting AI to work reliably and parrying new Trump-era tech policies.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/quantum-computing-is-closer-than-ever-everybodys-too-busy-to-pay-attention-898bc921