Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Quantum Computing 2022: Teething Pains

By Nir Minerbi, CEO and co-founder, Classiq

The race to create powerful quantum computers is on, and several vendors will introduce computers with more than 100 quantum bits ("qubits") in 2022. While the number of qubits is not the only measure of a computer's capabilities (other important attributes are the coherence, the connectivity, and the types of quantum gates), it is a good first approximation.

Additional companies will attempt to utilize these larger quantum computers to solve real-world problems. They will assemble teams of experts, choose interesting and valuable use cases, survey the academic literature, and pick problems that they want to tackle. As the scale of the problems grows, so will the size and sophistication of the quantum circuits intended to solve them.

But these teams are likely to run into "teething" problems for quantum computers: problems that did not exist or perhaps were not evident when "baby quantum computers" first appeared on the scene.

Sophisticated circuits will become nearly impossible to design manually. When I was a young boy, my parents purchased an ‘electronics kit' for me, a few components that came with instructions on how to construct simple circuits. But these methods of manually connecting the components don't scale - perhaps I could manually build a 10-component circuit, but certainly not a 1000-component one. The same problems exist in quantum. Initial quantum circuits deployed a handful of qubits and quantum gates, and thus the connectivity between qubits and gates could be done manually. But computers in 2022 will have a much larger number of qubits, and defining the connections between them manually is as difficult as running a 100-meter dash in under nine seconds.

Larger circuits can no longer be simulated on classical computers. The largest classical computers today can simulate quantum circuits of 40, maybe 50 qubits. But how do you simulate (and thus debug) a 100-qubit circuit? 

There will be an acute shortage of quantum algorithm designers. Today, designing a quantum circuit typically required PhD-level knowledge in quantum information sciences. While leading universities are ramping up their quantum education tracks, such qualified folks are very hard to come by. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that actual quantum solutions require more than quantum knowledge - they require domain-specific knowledge in areas such as finance, chemistry, logistics, cryptography and more.

Just like actual teething can be a frustrating time for babies and their parents, failure to address these quantum computing problems can be a source of frustration to organizations that are excited about the transformational potential of quantum computing. To unleash this potential a new approach is required to the process of designing, debugging, and maintaining quantum circuits. Without it, we face the risk of a ‘quantum winter', reminiscent of the ‘AI winter' that happened when expectations from AI were left unmet for several years.

I believe that companies like Classiq Technologies have come forward with such a promising approach. In these approaches, algorithm designers define the behavior of the quantum circuit at a functional level. A computer that ingests this functional description, examines thousands of thousands of implementation options and selects the best one. Just like we let our phones examine many possible routes to a destination and take into account traffic conditions, quantum software engineers will let a computer examine numerous ways of converting the functional description into the exact connectivity of qubits and gates. By focusing on "what needs to be accomplished" instead of "how it is coded at the lower level", such approaches make quantum programming more accessible and broaden the talent pool that can make meaningful contributions using quantum computing. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nir Minerbi is the co-founder and CEO of Classiq, a company developing a unique platform for quantum algorithm design. Mr. Minerbi has a history of leading cutting-edge technology teams and projects to extraordinary outcomes. He has a Master's degree in Physics and is a graduate of the prestigious 'Talpiot' program, described by Forbes magazine as "a Rhodes scholarship, a presidential fellowship, and a Harvard M.B.A. rolled into one".