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As Sabrina Maniscalco, CEO of the quantum-computing start-up Algorithmiq, told Nature, These machines are coming.

If thats the case, if and when they get here, its going to kickstart a computing revolution. Quantum computers are built to be able to perform incredibly complex and energy-expensive operations with ease that current computers couldnt hope to match. They will open up whole new avenues of computing potential in a vast array of fields, and hopefully answer a lot of questions that we arguably dont even have to power to properly ask right now.

But before thats possible, developers have to get around one major stumbling block: quantum noise.

Quantum noise is basically interference, and it can come from a variety of sourceseverything from interfering radiation to temperature fluctuations. The more noise in a calculation, the more error in the answer. And while quantum bitsor qubitsare incredibly powerful, theyre also temperamental. Anything that can knock them out of their quantum state before the calculation is finished can introduce noise and, therefore, errors.

Ideally, researchers developing these computers want to find ways to actually eliminate this noise before it throws flags by creating what are known as fault-tolerant circuits. But until we figure out how to do that, scientists are working on error mitigation strategies. And thats exactly how IBM got their computer to make its breakthrough calculation.

The researchers took a look at what the noise in their circuits looked like, and mapped it out as well as they could. Then, once the computer had finished its initial calculation, they were able to basically go back in and subtract the noise from the computers answer. This allowed the team to generate a final answer with extremely limited noise pollution to a problem that IBM claims is actually real-world useful. Their calculations used all 127 qubits built into the Eagle processor and took up to 60 processing steps.

Now, this breakthrough isnt quite quantum supremacythe ability of quantum computers to solve problems that regular ones cant. Were most likely not there yet (though Google claimed to have hit that milestone in 2019), and some experts dont think we could ever get there simply through error mitigation.

And even though this quantum benchmark gets a lot closer to real-world useful than Googles claimed quantum supremacy experiment, the test still only modeled a significantly simplified version of the material it was asked to simulate. Simplified tasks are not out of the ordinary for developing new systems, but its important to contextualize the complexity of what these machines are doing.

But the breakthrough seems to be a step in the right direction, especially for the short-term. In theory, this experiment shows that there is promise in the idea of creating a useful quantum computer through error mitigation, even if we cant fully manage true error correction with fault-tolerant circuits just yet. It may be a worthwhile stopover before pretty much everybody, including IBM, sets their sights fully on a noise-free quantum computing system.

Even a little bit of useful quantum computing has the potential to really shake things up.

Associate News Editor

Jackie is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania. She's especially fond of writing about space and physics, and loves sharing the weird wonders of the universe with anyone who wants to listen. She is supervised in her home office by her two cats.

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