{"id":511065,"date":"2026-04-03T16:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T16:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/511065\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T16:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T16:48:08","slug":"new-advances-bring-the-era-of-quantum-computers-closer-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/511065\/","title":{"rendered":"New Advances Bring the Era of Quantum Computers Closer Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a white paper<\/a> posted the same day as the Caltech paper, Gidney and his collaborators announced that they had developed a new quantum procedure specifically for breaking ECC that was at least 10 times as efficient than previous procedures. They estimated that most cryptocurrencies would yield in minutes to a machine with fewer than 500,000 qubits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat tenfold reduction in the actual space-time cost of elliptic curve code breaking is hugely significant,\u201d said Jeff Thompson<\/a>, a physicist at Princeton University and CEO of the neutral atoms startup Logiqal.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s efficient implementation of Shor\u2019s algorithm and Caltech\u2019s new protocol suggest that smaller quantum computers will be able to pull off bigger feats than many researchers had realized. They also mark a turning point at which researchers are beginning to conceal crucial details that competitors or bad actors might find useful. For the first time, Google described their work using a \u201czero knowledge proof<\/a>,\u201d a technique for revealing that a program works without revealing exactly how it works.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Robert Huang used a large language model to create a qLDPC code efficient enough to make one virtual qubit from only four atoms.<\/p>\n

Given the rapid quantum progress, physicists say that switching out RSA and ECC for new cryptographic schemes that quantum computers can\u2019t break is essential. In 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology published new codes that can keep secrets safe from both classical and quantum computers. And the U.S. government has laid out a plan to completely switch to these new codes by 2035. But some researchers believe that key players may need to act more quickly. Google, for instance, recently announced that it aims to stop relying on RSA and ECC by 2029<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were thinking about when you were going to do a post-quantum crypto transition, you should not be waiting any longer,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cThis is the time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quantum Dreams vs. Reality<\/p>\n

Opinions range on how plausible it will be for Oratomic to build a quantum computer as formidable as the one the physicists have described on paper. To one leader of neutral atom computing, the Caltech team\u2019s projections are not particularly surprising. \u201cThey are broadly in line with what we and others have estimated,\u201d said Lukin of Harvard, a founder of the neutral atom startup QuEra Computing. \u201cBut in these resource estimates details matter and it is important to work them out carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have to build these machines and see if they work,\u201d said John Preskill.<\/p>\n

And a few key details remain vague \u2014 notably error correction steps crucial to the Caltech team\u2019s rosiest projections \u2014 making it hard for external researchers to fully evaluate their claims.<\/p>\n

Other researchers question some of the team\u2019s mechanical expectations. For example, the Caltech group made \u201caggressive assumptions about the speed of operations they can do,\u201d Thompson said. The group claims in its paper that the machine will eventually be able pull off the entire error correction process \u2014 check for errors, interpret what it finds, fix the errors, replace any atoms that have gone astray, and prepare to do it all over again \u2014 once every millisecond.<\/p>\n

The machine would also have to keep up that cadence of error correction for days or even weeks while a computation runs, a feat no group has accomplished. \u201cI\u2019d like to see a demonstration on a smaller scale, say, 100 or 1,000 qubits,\u201d said Mark Saffman<\/a>, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and chief scientist for quantum information at Infleqtion, another neutral atom startup. \u201cShow me that you can do a million rounds or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Caltech team knows its plan is ambitious and that integrating all the parts it has in mind will require a tremendous engineering and technological effort. At the same time, the physicists don\u2019t see any insurmountable obstacles. \u201cWe just have to build these machines and see if they work,\u201d Preskill said.<\/p>\n

New Horizons<\/p>\n

If any group succeeds at building a quantum computer that can realize Shor\u2019s algorithm, it will mark the end an era \u2014 specifically, the \u201cNoisy Intermediate Scale Quantum<\/a>\u201d era, as Preskill dubbed the pre-error-correction period in a 2018 paper. Each researcher has a vision for what to pursue first with a machine in the new \u201cfault-tolerant\u201d era.<\/p>\n

Huang said he would start by running Shor\u2019s algorithm, just to prove that the device works. After that, he said he would try to use it to speed up machine learning \u2014 an application to be detailed in coming work.<\/p>\n

Most of the architects building quantum computers, whether at Oratomic or other startups, are physicists at heart. They\u2019re interested in physics, not cryptography. Specifically, they\u2019re interested in all the things a computer fluent in the language of quantum mechanics could teach them about the quantum realm, such as what sort of materials might become superconductors even at warm temperatures. Preskill, for his part, would like to simulate the quantum nature of space-time.<\/p>\n

The Caltech group knows it has years of work ahead before any of its dreams have a chance of coming true. But the researchers can\u2019t wait to get started. \u201cPick a cooler life quest than building the world\u2019s first quantum computer with your friends!\u201d said a jubilant Bluvstein, reached by phone shortly before their paper went live, before rushing off to celebrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a white paper posted the same day as the Caltech paper, Gidney and his collaborators announced that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2302,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-511065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}