Quantinuum, one of the world’s most relevant companies in the development of quantum computing, has successfully extracted 48 logical qubits with error correction from just 98 physical qubits, cutting hardware requirements in half. The company describes this as a world record in a study published on March 4th.
Although there is no fixed standard in the industry, the most accepted estimates are: Building a functional logical qubit requires 100 to 1,000 physical qubitsAccording to the specialized magazine “Post Quantum.” Quantinuum claims to have achieved an efficiency of just 2:1.
Quantum computers always make mistakes. This is not a design flaw, but its nature. Qubits store information in a state that is fragile enough to be immune to environmental disturbances, such as vibrations, temperature changes, and even electromagnetic radiation from the environment. may give wrong results by changing.
The more errors accumulate in a system, the less reliable its results become. The less useful the hardware is.
The solution, which has been known for decades, is Group several physical qubits together (the basic unit of quantum computing) so they “monitor” each other. If one fails, the others can detect it and rebuild the correct value. This robust set is called a logical qubit and is a combination of several physical qubits. Therefore, a logical qubit becomes a functional qubit that can perform reliable calculations.
The question has always been how many physical qubits you have to sacrifice to build one. To do it right, we needed hundreds of physical qubits for every available logical qubit. Significantly limits the size of possible calculations. In the Quantinum experiment, that percentage was reduced to an all-time low.
The company says it started with a code called “iceberg” known for its nearly 1:1 efficiency between physical and logical qubits. This code detects the error but does not fix it. Discard the calculation if a problem occurs.
To make the leap to an actual fix, the team took two layers of that code and “concatenated” them, weaving them into a more complex structure. According to statements outside the research, the resulting logical qubit is They outperformed their physical counterparts in all testsIn some cases, improvements of 10-100 times can be seen.
A stepping stone to useful quantum computing
Quantum computing currently faces a clear bottleneck. Qubit errors accumulate faster than they can be correctedwhich limits the computational depth and usefulness.
reduce Amount of physical qubits needed to build high-quality logical qubits It actually reduces the size and cost of the hardware needed to cross that threshold.
In other words, if it used to be that you needed a stadium full of workers to build one earthquake-resistant house; It’s enough to have a crew..
This won’t solve your final problem, but it will fit within the scope of your existing machine.
Quantum advances put the future of current cryptographic systems in jeopardy
Previous research by Quantinuum reported by CriptoNoticias showed that error correction can exceed a threshold known as “.break even«: At that point Protecting the qubits (through error correction) improves the results rather than degrading them.something that could not be achieved with conventional technology.
Together with other research, it is estimated that both advances can allow RSA-2048 encryption to be broken with 10 times less hardware than expected. which one Fueling debate about the arrival of the so-calledQ-day«: The moment quantum computers have the potential to breach the cryptographic systems that protect networks like Bitcoin and much of the world’s digital infrastructure today.
RSA-2048 encryption is the protocol that secures the most secure connections on the Internet today, from accessing your online bank to making card purchases.
Bitcoin uses another system called ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) to protect the private keys that users use to authorize transactions.
Both the RSA and ECDSA schemes rely on mathematical problems that would take a classical computer thousands of years to solve, but a sufficiently powerful quantum machine could conceivably attack in a matter of hours. If he Q-day arrival, these two cryptographic systems could be compromised. However, it is worth noting that the most conservative estimates indicate that 20 million physical qubits would need to be used to crack the Bitcoin encryption.