More and more effort and money is being spent on making it real. Both academia and the industry have been making huge progress in recent years – and still a few non-trivial steps need to be taken in order to get there. Different companies have different approaches regarding how to build a well-functioning and stable quantum computer.
The world has moved far since we had the first concrete ideas of how to make quantum computers. The most important of these may be the concept of the ‘cloud’. A quantum computer does not need to be something you acquire to host on your own premises; on the contrary, the current research is born from the cloud and from the idea of a connected world.
Companies and organizations throughout the world are preparing for the post-quantum era. While we do not know exactly when it will begin, but we do know that when it does, it will dramatically push back boundaries in many, many areas. Internet security as we know it will be challenged in completely new ways. Manufacturing processes, protein folding, drug discovery – these are just a few of the areas that we already know will be affected. To these we may add a huge potential that has yet to be discovered.
A race is underway for quantum supremacy and quantum advantage.
The report at hand delivers a thorough, full-spectrum tour of the world of quantum computing, which will be followed up by a series of deep dives into some of the specific key areas of this exciting field. Quantum computing is the most radical change to computer science since the birth of the transistor.
I wish you an enjoyable read.
Preben Thorø
CTO Trifork GmbH and Head of the GOTO Conferences Programme Committee