Like Atom Computing, QuEra makes a neutral atom quantum computer, and its Gemini model has 260 physical qubits and is commercially available.
“We’ve demonstrated a 3,000-qubit machine running continuously,” Boger adds.
That puts a usable quantum computer within sight, he says. “There is still work to be done. But it’s not years and years and years.”
The timeline has also been affected by recent changes in estimates as to how many qubits a quantum computer actually needs to be useful. For example, according to the latest Google research, it could take as few as 1,200 logical qubits for a quantum computer to break elliptic curve cryptography.
The QuEra announcement is also helping position neutral atoms as a viable alternative to the superconducting approach, such as the one used by IBM, says Holger Mueller, analyst at Constellation Research.
“It’s the race for error correction,” he says. The question is whether QuEra’s approach will be the one that works. “How good or record-breaking the result is remains to be seen,” Mueller says.
