We may not understand all there is to understand about quantum computing yet, but we know a good game of technology one-upmanship when we see it: Quantum computing firm IonQ this week claimed a new accuracy record for barium-based qubits, only to have Quantinuum hours later post a claim to have beaten that record.
IonQ Thursday said it was able to reduce state preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors–a key metric for determining accuracy in quantum computing–from 50 errors per 10,000 computations down to only 4 per 10,000 computations. That translates to an increase from 99.5% state detection fidelity up to “an industry-leading 99.96%,” IonQ said in an announcement received by Fierce Electronics Thursday morning.
Within four hours of receiving that claim, Fierce Electronics received a similar one, this time from Quantinuum, the company that was formed from the merger of Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum Computing. Quantinuum’s announcement stated that its researchers “set a new record in the industry standard on quantum computing fidelity (SPAM) utilizing non-radioactive barium-137 ions, achieving 99.9904% accuracy. This is the highest fidelity reading out of any quantum technology to-date—including Ion’sQ recent readout performance of barium systems.”
Some folks from the Quantinuum side of the SPAM war even took time on Twitter to flex:
It was not immediately clear how these achievements might track in a real-world quantum computing environment, but the rapid escalation in accuracy claims can only be a good thing for the quantum computing sector. It shows how hard researchers are working to reduce errors, and how increasingly reliable future systems will be.
Fierce Electronics also learned an important lesson: Some SPAM emails that land in your inbox actually are worth reading…
In other quantum computing news this week, Rigetti made its public market debut on Nasdaq after closing its merger transaction with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II.
Meanwhile, D-Wave which recently announced its own plan to become a publicly-traded company via merger, announced business results from quantum hybrid computing applications it collaborated on with Spain’s CaixaBank. Finance continues to be a key early market opportunity for quantum computing, and the performance of any initial applications is going to be watched very closely.
Finally, the University of Chicago announced this week that its quantum researchers have created a hybrid array of neutral atoms from two different elements, significantly broadening the system’s potential applications in quantum technology. Up to this point, building a quantum computer from neutral atoms has involved trapping constructed from only one element with the fear that using two elements might be too complex.