Quantum computing technology pushes for IT advantage
Tech and funding issues remain. But work on error handling, an expanding software stack and the growth of quantum ecosystems are advancing the pursuit of 'quantum advantage.'
Quantum computing, overshadowed in recent years by the stunning rise of generative AI, is making quiet -- and, in some pockets, accelerated -- progress toward realizing its full potential.
This still-emerging technology aims to dramatically speed up the processing of complex mathematical and computational problems, employing the principles of quantum mechanics. Quantum computing, and the related fields of quantum sensing and quantum communication, are poised to affect a variety of industries, from life sciences to financial services and others, as well as the government and defense sectors. Enterprise IT leaders can already explore early manifestations of quantum technology offered by an array of quantum hardware vendors and hyperscalers for access in the cloud -- and they might discern some familiar patterns as they do so.
Indeed, the quantum sector has begun to show signs of the evolution that signaled the emergence of conventional computing decades ago. Those trends include a shift toward software development versus a hardware-centric view of computing, previously seen in the unbundling of mainframe software in the 1960s. In addition, the U.S. military's sizeable commitment to quantum technology, reflected in recent multimillion-dollar contracts, mirrors the Pentagon's early use of computers such as ENIAC in the 1940s.
Technical challenges, however, block the path of mainstream quantum adoption. Error handling is a particularly difficult challenge, as researchers work to create methods for reducing the large number of errors that commonly crop up in quantum computations. Other issues include the need for more capable algorithms and software that can take advantage of quantum hardware.
Surmounting such hurdles will help propel quantum technology from its current stage, referred to by researchers as noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ), to the envisioned next phase, which the industry has dubbed quantum advantage. That transition will mark the point at which a quantum machine can outperform a classical computer in certain use cases, such as simulation, optimization and cryptography. When it will happen is an open question. Estimates generally range from five to 10 years. But recent advances in software and hardware -- and the potential for unexpected breakthroughs -- could speed up the arrival of quantum advantage.
Financial services, healthcare, life sciences and government are among the industries that could potentially benefit from quantum computing.
Getting to that point will require significant funding, which recently has proven a bit tricky for quantum vendors. Private sector investment from venture capital firms and other sources declined in 2023. To some extent, quantum shared the same fate as other technologies in a more restrictive investment climate. But quantum also bumped up against the generative AI (GenAI) juggernaut and investor perceptions of quicker financial returns with the latter technology.
Public sector investment, however, has helped ease the funding situation, with governments and universities sponsoring quantum projects. Some of that investment is coalescing around quantum ecosystems, regional consortia built on private-public partnerships. Those ecosystems stand to play an important role in bringing together academic researchers, startups, hardware and software expertise, and sources of funding to spur the commercialization of quantum computing.
And while that remains a future prospect, many businesses will find themselves reacting to quantum in the near term. That's because the arrival of quantum-advantage machines will introduce the risk that threat actors could use them to crack encryption algorithms. Security experts said they believe preparing for post-quantum cryptography will be time-consuming, so enterprises with the greatest exposure are expected to soon embark on that task. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) earlier this year published the first quantum-ready encryption algorithms, kicking off what's likely to be a multiyear adoption race.
Quantum technology, however, could be harnessed for social good as well as security attacks. Applications in health and environmental sensing could improve diagnostics for human and ecological well-being. In addition, quantum proponents believe this style of computing will use less power than conventional IT. If that assertion proves true, quantum will contribute to organizations' carbon-reduction goals and broader sustainability strategies.
From bits to qubits: Quantum mechanics provides a vastly different computing paradigm.
Quantum background and the nature of NISQ
To understand where quantum computing is heading, a review of how it works and where it's been is in order.
Quantum computing is built on the quantum bit, or qubit, as the foundational unit of information. While the bit of classical computing represents either a 0 or a 1, a qubit can represent all of the possible states between 0 and 1. That's because a qubit -- a subatomic particle, such as an electron or ion -- behaves according to the quantum principle of superposition: the ability of a particle to represent multiple possibilities until it's measured.
Superposition lets quantum computers process a multitude of calculations in parallel. Entanglement, another aspect of quantum mechanics, links qubits together and reinforces parallelism. As more qubits are added to a quantum system, entanglement means that its processing power increases exponentially. A quantum computer uses quantum gates to create superposition in qubits or entangle them. A sequence of gates perform those operations on a quantum circuit, which implements a quantum algorithm. The algorithm provides a set of instructions for solving a problem; the last step is measuring qubits to obtain the result of the computation.
And there's the rub. The quantum states that enable computation easily collapse due to the inherent instability of qubits. Vibration, radiation or an errant atom -- the "noise" of NISQ -- will result in quantum decoherence, in which the quantum properties of superposition and entanglement disappear. The upshot: Numerous errors occur in a quantum computer's computations.
Quantum computing developments have shifted over the years from basic research to the particulars of error-handling methods.
Error handling becomes a top technical challenge
Against that backdrop, error handling is a top, if not the top, problem that industry and academia are trying to solve.
"The work on errors is fundamental now," said Martin Whitworth, lead cyber-risk expert at S&P Global Ratings.
"If we don't do it right, we end up with lots of dead qubits," added Sudeep Kesh, chief innovation officer at the credit ratings and research company.
One key thrust is quantum error correction -- a technique that, in theory, could make quantum computers fault tolerant. QEC distributes and encodes information contained in one qubit across multiple qubits. The encoding, which allows for error detection and correction, aims to offset the fragility of individual qubits. The pool of encoded qubits is called a logical, or virtual, qubit, while the supporting qubits are referred to as physical qubits.
This approach, however, relies on a multitude of qubits to support each piece of quantum information. Some estimates suggest QEC will require quantum computers with thousands of qubits to prove viable. The need for more qubits brings up another key constraint of the NISQ era: the limited number of qubits available in intermediate-scale machines. Currently, the top qubit counts for gate-based systems are around 1,000.
Focusing on error suppression and mitigation
While QEC is generally considered impractical for use with the current generation of quantum computers, researchers are creating other error-handling methods for the machines available today. Quantum technologists have labeled those techniques error suppression and error mitigation. Here, the idea is not to correct errors but to reduce their numbers and blunt their effects.
"Error correction needs to have overhead," said Martina Gschwendtner, a consultant in the Munich office of McKinsey & Co., referring to the number of qubits needed to make QEC viable. "With the current number of qubits that we have, error suppression and mitigation are good additional techniques."
Q-Ctrl, a quantum infrastructure software company, is among the technology providers pursuing error suppression as the industry works toward error correction. Error suppression techniques aim to shield qubits from noise in their surrounding environments to reduce the number of errors.
In the next five to 10 years, QEC could deliver advantages that encourage widespread use, said Michael Biercuk, Q-Ctrl's founder and CEO. In the meantime, Q-Ctrl is focused on releasing quantum products that give end users the most power, he said.
"Today, that is using error suppression," Biercuk added.
IBM uses both error suppression -- Q-Ctrl is one of its software partners -- and error mitigation to improve the "execution performance" of its quantum hardware, said Blake Johnson, quantum engine lead at IBM Quantum. Those techniques are part of IBM's Qiskit software stack for quantum computing.
Error mitigation, in IBM's view, is the key near-term technology for creating useful quantum computers. Mitigation involves running a quantum computation multiple times and combining the outputs into a lower-error, higher-quality result, Johnson noted.
The mitigation approach is a compromise between processing speed and quality, since the better result comes at the expense of running multiple computations and taking more time to do so. Error correction, in contrast, trades space for quality, Johnson said, citing the technique's redundant encoding of information across many qubits.
Mixing error-handling methods
IBM's quantum team is researching ways to combine error mitigation and error correction. Johnson said the company's first error-correcting machines, which IBM plans to roll out in 2029, might offer a blend of the two technologies.
Biercuk also sees mixed error-handling techniques in the future of quantum computing. Error suppression is necessary for effective error correction, he said, using the following air conditioning analogy to make his point.
"The first thing you want to do when the air conditioner is on is close all the doors and windows," Biercuk said. "Running quantum error correction on hardware with no error suppression is like running an air conditioner with all the doors and windows open."
Without error suppression, an error-correcting quantum computer must deal with all the errors rapidly proliferating through the system, Biercuk said. In effect, the machine works extra hard to achieve only a moderate level of success.
"If you have to turn the air conditioner up to 11, it uses a large amount of power and it doesn't really get things that cold," he said. "Error suppression plus error correction is like you close the doors and windows. The errors coming through are dramatically lower, and we get very comfortable with a very low amount of effort."
Kesh said error-handling methods are important to cultivate before quantum computers scale to quantum-advantage levels.
"Once you scale, you don't want to deal with [high error rates] after the fact," he said. "It becomes a big mess to clean up."
QEC shows signs of acceleration
While work on error suppression and mitigation continues, some developments point to the potential for accelerating the arrival of practical error correction.
Microsoft in April 2024 said its qubit-virtualization system, which offers error diagnostics and correction, was able to create four "highly reliable logical qubits" from 30 physical qubits when combined with quantum hardware from Quantinuum. Microsoft said the tandem would encounter an error once in every 100,000 operations. The company upped the logical qubit count to 12 in a subsequent demonstration using Quantinuum's 56-qubit machine, according to a Microsoft blog post.
Krysta Svore, technical fellow for advanced quantum development at Microsoft, said the company will need to scale up the number of logical qubits and improve their error rates to advance its error-correction technology.
"Ultimately, [reaching] scientific quantum advantage will require upwards of 100 logical qubits that exhibit, at most, one error for every 100 million logical operations," Svore said in a statement provided to TechTarget. "To achieve this capability, it also requires scaling up the number of physical qubits in the [quantum processing unit] and continuing to improve physical qubit error rates."
In August 2024, IonQ, a manufacturer of quantum computers, said its researchers had developed a "partial error correction" technique that employs a physical-to-logical qubit overhead ratio of 3-to-1. By comparison, other techniques currently demand "tens, hundreds or even thousands of qubits for error correction," the company added.
Also in August, Google Quantum AI researchers reported improvements in error correction through the use of more durable logical qubits. A research paper published on the ArXiv scientific report repository pointed to a logical qubit with "more than double the lifetime of its constituent qubits" -- a development the paper cited as a step toward fault-tolerant quantum computing. But it also noted the need for a higher number of physical qubits to achieve low logical error rates, a prospect the researchers acknowledged would be "resource intensive."
Quantum software on the rise
Error-handling innovation takes place at the lower levels of an evolving quantum software stack. Advances here pave the way for meaningful applications and a pivotal shift from quantum computing's early hardware emphasis.
"Quantum computing, as an industry, is still searching for that killer app, that application where there's a demonstrable quantum advantage," IBM's Johnson said. "The first phase of quantum computing technology development, perhaps rightly, focused solely on the hardware because building these machines is complicated and tricky. We really need fantastic, high-performing hardware in order for there to be a possibility of an advantage."
The industry, however, has reached a point where "we start to demand more of our software," Johnson said. "It can't get in our way. And even better, it needs to accelerate our path toward ... discovery and exploration."
Quantum computing, as an industry, is still searching for that killer app, that application where there's a demonstrable quantum advantage.
Blake JohnsonQuantum engine lead, IBM Quantum
Johnson said his team feels confident that IBM's Qiskit, which includes an SDK for building quantum circuits along with error-handling components, is ready to support software residing higher up the stack. To that end, IBM and its software partners offer a Qiskit Functions catalog. Some functions aim to improve the execution performance of quantum hardware, while others inhabit the application layer.
One such application function, Q-Ctrl's Fire Opal Optimization Solver, simplifies the steps required to address optimization problems, such as creating a balanced investment portfolio or building an efficient supply chain. Optimization is considered an ideal use case for quantum to demonstrate superior computational speed compared with classical computing. Other Qiskit software offerings are geared to specific industries. An application function from QunaSys, a quantum startup, targets problems in chemistry, for example.
Developments such as IonQ's error-correction technology could also facilitate the industry's software phase. Addressing quantum noise with fewer qubits avoids the expense of higher qubit counts, which increases interest in the technology as a platform for software development.
"Any innovation that brings down the cost of quantum computing error correction makes us closer to large-scale quantum applications," IonQ CEO Peter Chapman said in a statement.
The 'de-verticalization' of quantum
Another aspect of the software era is a trend that quantum industry executives call "de-verticalization." This development marks a transition away from the top quantum technology providers building hardware and software to the emergence of an independent software sector. This pattern was also seen in the evolution of classical computing decades ago. Mainframe makers, as the pioneers of commercial computing, initially provided monolithic machines but eventually unbundled the hardware and software.
"When the technology is really early-stage, especially when we're talking about a hardware vendor, they do everything from building the hardware all the way up to the applications and interfaces," Biercuk said. "It makes sense at first, but it stops making sense if the technology matures."
IBM made the first major push to de-verticalize, with other hardware players also moving in that direction, Biercuk said. He cited Diraq, Oxford Quantum Circuits and Rigetti Computing as examples. Those companies all integrated Q-Ctrl's software into their platforms in 2024.
"We think this is a model that shows a mature ecosystem," Biercuk said. "You look at the cloud ecosystem [and] it's not just one provider from soup to nuts. There are many, many different specialist organizations who contribute, and we see this as a growing trend that supports the diversification of the quantum sector."
Funding for quantum computing: It's complicated
Quantum computing, like any emerging technology, needs adequate financial backing to drive hardware and software R&D. But McKinsey's 2024 "Quantum Technology Monitor" report found that private funding for quantum technology startups dropped 27% in 2023. The dip to $1.71 billion follows an all-time high of $2.35 billion in 2022, according to the report. Those numbers are based on private investment data from the PitchBook capital markets database, McKinsey said.
GenAI's abrupt arrival in late 2022 and subsequent widespread adoption in businesses has played a role in the private investment decline. The McKinsey report cited "a significant shift in focus toward generative AI as well as lingering perceptions of [quantum computing] being a long-term technology whose potential in various sectors is still being understood and evaluated."
Indeed, venture capital (VC) investment in generative AI dwarfed quantum computing in 2023: Not counting large investments made by Microsoft and Amazon, professional services firm EY pegged VC funding for GenAI at $6 billion that year, more than three times McKinsey's private investment figure for quantum.
"There have been these questions for some time about whether new developments like GenAI have completely taken the wind out of the sails of quantum," Biercuk noted.
But other factors also contribute to funding trends. A more cautious investment environment has affected a wide spectrum of technologies, not just quantum.
Boston Consulting Group's July 2024 research report on quantum computing's long-term prospects cited a general drop in tech investments in 2023. "All tech investments were down [and] quantum computing was down during a period of uncertainty," said Matt Langione, a managing director and partner at BCG and one of the report's authors.
Similarly, the "State of Quantum 2024" report suggested the downturn in quantum technology investment has more to do with "overall venture capital macro trends" than declining confidence in quantum. Technology vendor IQM Quantum Computers, along with VC firms OpenOcean and Lakestar, compiled that report, which was published in January 2024.
Demand for quantum talent also an issue
Enterprises perennially struggle to hire experienced professionals in fields such as cybersecurity and AI. Now, they can add quantum computing to that list.
"One of the biggest obstacles isn't just technical -- it's the shortage of skilled talent," said Gourishanker Jha, executive vice president and chief transformation officer at Movate, an IT services company with headquarters in Plano, Texas, and significant operations in India.
Jha said universities in India and around the world have trouble building quantum expertise due to limited technical resources and a lack of qualified instructors. Movate is collaborating with various educational programs and universities to address the quantum skills issue, he added.
Quantum software changes investment calculus
Quantum computing's shift toward software, however, could alter the funding outlook. Technology investors tend to favor software, which has lower capital requirements and quicker development cycles than hardware.
"Many investors in traditional tech love software -- the quantum sector has historically not looked like that," Biercuk said. But a new wave of software companies is inspiring an emerging "investor zeitgeist," he added.
Q-Ctrl, for one, seems to be benefiting from the changing investment climate. In October 2024, a group of investors more than doubled the company's Series B funding in a second round that increased the original $54 million investment to a total of $113 million. Q-Ctrl called it the largest-ever aggregate Series B funding round for a quantum software provider.
Public sector lines up billions for quantum
To this point, though, public sector support for quantum computing has been much greater. Governments worldwide have been "making big investments," which are likely to exceed $10 billion over the next three to five years, according to the BCG report.
McKinsey's report, meanwhile, cited a more than 50% jump in public funding for quantum in 2023. The report ranked China as the leading public sector investor, based on announced quantum technology funding, with Germany, the U.K., the U.S. and South Korea rounding out the top five.
In his statement, IonQ's Chapman said the U.S. government's investment in quantum information science R&D doubled between 2019 and 2022. IonQ in September 2024 captured its largest government contract award of the year, a $54.5 million pact with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
"While the deal itself is significant for its size, it's also indicative of how the Department of Defense is betting on quantum to bolster national defense," he said.
Tech fragmentation muddies investment waters
But as investors of all kinds consider quantum computing, they must deal with a fragmented technology market. Quantum technology vendors pursue several computing styles, or modalities, that differ in how they create and control qubits. Superconducting computers from companies such as IBM, Rigetti and IQM rely on electronic circuits. Trapped-ion machines from vendors such as IonQ and Quantinuum use electromagnetic fields to confine charged particles. Other modalities include neutral atom, which uses particles with a net electrical charge of zero, and photonic, which uses particles of light as qubits.
No modality has emerged as the clear victor, muddying the funding waters.
"This makes things complicated for the investors," said Henning Soller, a partner and quantum research leader at McKinsey.
As a result, traditional tech investors either back several types of quantum companies or back away from investing altogether. "They are shying away from investment at this stage because of technology uncertainty," Soller said of the latter group.
National agendas, meanwhile, influence government investment in quantum technology. Those funding programs might favor companies and modalities prevalent in a region.
"We see a concentration on one technology or one player that is pushed as part of an overarching agenda -- and not necessarily because of a full evaluation of the underlying players," Soller said.
Quantum computing spans several modalities.
Ecosystems provide centers for investment, development
Some of the investment in quantum R&D is being funneled into quantum ecosystems, which are springing up around the globe. Ecosystems bring together government agencies, universities, technology vendors, startups and various funding pools.
The 2024 McKinsey report said ecosystems, which the consulting company calls innovation clusters, coordinate research and resources with the goal of stimulating quantum technology's development.
McKinsey's Gschwendtner said innovation clusters typically include at least one or two large universities, which conduct foundational research and provide a source of talent. The universities, in turn, work with government agencies to create acceleration programs, which incubate quantum hardware and software startups. Large enterprises in industry sectors such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare and financial services are also part of the mix -- they partner with the universities and startups.
"Industry players and startups are crucial for developing use cases," Gschwendtner said, citing the fusion of business applications and technical knowledge.
In addition to quantum startups, some of the top classical technology providers -- Microsoft and IBM, for instance -- figure prominently in particular ecosystems.
Quantum ecosystems and clusters have emerged worldwide.
Offering access to limited resources
Ecosystems cultivate quantum technology and also play an important role in providing access to the limited number of systems currently deployed. But ecosystems can share scarce computing resources with researchers and developers.
The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, or MassTech, a quasi-public economic development agency, announced plans for such a cluster in October 2024. The Quantum Computing Complex will reside at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) in Holyoke, Mass. It's funded through a $5 million state grant and an $11 million investment from quantum vendor QuEra Computing. QuEra plans to deploy a neutral atom quantum computer at the complex over the next two years.
"The real benefit of that is to get researchers access to the quantum system," said Patrick Larkin, deputy director at MassTech and director of its Innovation Institute. "It enables the user base to experience and fundamentally understand the unique attributes of quantum computing."
The cluster will provide quantum computing access to researchers affiliated with the MGHPCC, a nonprofit joint venture that encompasses some 20,000 potential users at Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, the University of Massachusetts system and Yale.
"The research community doesn't regularly use quantum today," Larkin said. "The goal is to really accelerate the growth of quantum exploration around the best applications and really create demand."
A partnership between IonQ and the QuantumBasel ecosystem in Switzerland has a similar aim regarding access. IonQ is building a quantum computer in the ecosystem's Basel facility and plans to go live with it by the end of 2024.
"Not everyone can purchase and install a quantum system on-site, so we expect to see clusters pop up for now until cloud access to systems scales enough to support the growing ecosystem," Chapman said.
Quantum ecosystems and hubs bring together university researchers, government agencies, tech providers and industry participants.
Sharing among ecosystems
Quantum ecosystems provide focal points for local collaboration. But could geographic fragmentation limit broader knowledge sharing and restrict economic development? Is there room for collective effort?
Gschwendtner said multiple innovation clusters in a region might, at some point, decide to connect their respective quantum computers to promote greater collaboration. The resulting network would also open access to more users within the region, she added.
MassTech's philosophy calls for regional cooperation, Larkin noted.
"Shared learning and engagement beyond our border is essential for us to be successful within our border," he said. "We think of our cluster as starting from Rome, N.Y., on the I-90 corridor, all the way into Boston."
Rome is home to AFRL, where the local cluster partners with IonQ, Rigetti and IBM, among other companies.
MassTech also sees collaboration opportunities along the Connecticut River Valley, Larkin noted. As for engagement outside of New England and the Northeast, MassTech has hosted representatives from a quantum ecosystem in Chicago.
Global collaboration, however, is more prone to conflicting national interests. McKinsey's Soller said it likely will be difficult to share quantum research related to national defense or telecom providers -- the latter due to national infrastructure sovereignty. "We don't think this collaboration would be easily executed," he said.
Navigating technical fragmentation in ecosystems
Ecosystems must also navigate technical fragmentation when deciding which quantum computing modalities to cultivate. MassTech, for its part, is taking a technology-agnostic approach.
"We start with the absolute premise that we are multimodality," Larkin said. "We aren't smart enough to know who the winner of this race is going to be."
MassTech considers each investment opportunity on its merits and funds nonprofit academic institutions, rather than investing directly in technology providers, Larkin said. Those institutions then bring their industry partners into the mix. That's the case with the MGHPCC, which is teaming with QuEra and its neutral atom technology.
Subsequent cluster investments would, ideally, "build out other modalities," Larkin noted.
Dealing with post-quantum cryptography
Investments in quantum computing are based on longish time horizons. In contrast, the security and logistical challenges of post-quantum computing security are a bit more time-sensitive. Some businesses should get started on the task of adopting new post-quantum encryption algorithms, industry executives said. But they emphasized there's no need for massive anxiety.
"I don't think it's panic stations," said Jon France, CISO at ISC2, a nonprofit member association and training organization for security professionals. "It's great that [post-quantum cryptography] has been anticipated. Too many times, we haven't anticipated the threat of technology soon enough."
NIST published three post-quantum algorithms in August 2024, and a fourth is scheduled for release by the end of the year. The level of urgency for adopting them varies by enterprise. Technology users can leave it to their vendors to take care of the cryptography embedded in products or services, France said. The technology providers, however, should kick off the adoption process fairly soon, he added.
"The first step is to take an inventory of your cryptographic assets and algorithms deployed so you can understand the magnitude of change," France said. "We see this as a change problem, not a technology problem."
S&P Global's Whitworth also emphasized planning over technology considerations.
"Forget about what post-quantum algorithms you are going to use," he advised. "Think about what you are doing at the moment. Where are you using cryptography, and where are you using the types of cryptography that are going to be vulnerable?"
Whitworth pointed to Rivest-Shamir-Adleman and elliptic curve cryptography as examples of vulnerable algorithms, citing the mathematical problems on which they're based -- in the case of RSA, finding the prime factors of very large numbers. RSA and ECC are the predominant forms of cryptography used to protect internet transactions, he noted.
"If you can identify the [places] where you are using cryptography, you have made a huge start," Whitworth said. "Then you can move along and look at some of the approved post-quantum algorithms."
Preparing for change
Businesses should assess the available cryptography options, keeping industry-specific needs in mind. But they should be prepared for change as researchers continue to review and refine the algorithms, Whitworth said.
"Someone may find a weakness and, if they do, that's quite normal," he said. "It will be addressed, or maybe another algorithm will become more favored."
Organizations ready to adopt a new approach will likely need to replace or modify their cryptographic libraries, according to NIST guidance. So, they must factor in how they will get those libraries into product lineups and how that move will affect their technology roadmaps, France said. They might also need to address other issues, such as updating encryption in older IoT devices. Such devices could be difficult to access or use encryption algorithms that can't be replaced, he said.
The post-quantum cryptography era remains a few years away, based on the timing currently envisioned. This gives businesses plenty of runway to plan and deploy resistant algorithms. But France acknowledged an unexpected leap in quantum technology "could pull that timeline in very sharply."
Several published reports in October 2024 suggested the timeline might already have arrived for enterprises using cryptography. Those articles, now largely debunked, stated researchers in China used a quantum computer to crack military-grade encryption. Although that appears to be a false alarm, organizations could eventually need to adjust their schedules on the fly.
Rodrigo Madanes, global innovation AI officer at EY, advised businesses to adopt "cryptographic agility" -- i.e., the ability to quickly adopt new cryptographic standards and algorithms as security threats emerge.
Prospects for social benefits
Quantum technology's potential for social good offers a counterpoint to the security risks. Improving healthcare is one such potential benefit.
"Some of the [applications] that stand out are the ways quantum sensing is being used in understanding and diagnosing disease," said Carl Dukatz, global lead for the quantum program at IT services and consulting firm Accenture.
He cited the example of magnetocardiography, a technique in which quantum sensors detect the heart's electrical activity to flag health problems. That same ability to detect electronic signals can also apply to diagnosing brain anomalies, he added. "There's lots of interest and movement in that area," Dukatz said.
Quantum sensing in healthcare ranked among the use cases cited in the World Economic Forum's "Quantum for Society" report, published in September 2024 in conjunction with Accenture. Dukatz was an adviser on the report.
Beyond healthcare, the WEF document pointed to the use of quantum sensors for environmental monitoring. Quantum gravimeters, for example, are designed to detect changes in Earth's gravitational field. Such devices could be used to track sea-level changes and seismic activity, according to the report.
Energy savings?
Another aspect of quantum's potential social benefits revolves around the expectation that the technology will use far less energy than classical computing. This idea is based on quantum's potential to solve problems more rapidly and with less computational power.
Frank Buytendijk, an analyst at Gartner, said he anticipates that quantum, along with photonic computing and neuromorphic computing, will alleviate the electricity constraints on IT within the next five to 10 years.
"This [time horizon] is where the promise of energy-efficient computing is being delivered," he said, speaking at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2024 in October.
Quantum's ability to conserve energy remains somewhat ambiguous, however. The WEF report cited the technology's potential as a sustainable computing paradigm but acknowledged that assertion demands more than a "simple calculation" as proof.
"A supercomputer might require a month to solve a specific problem that a quantum computer could solve within a few minutes, but the relationship between energy consumption and computation time in a quantum computer is not linear," the report stated. That is, a faster result isn't necessarily a more energy-efficient one if quantum machines end up using disproportionately more energy as they tackle bigger problems.
Dukatz also noted the uncertain relationship between quantum technology and energy use. "That was one of the most challenging sections [of the WEF report] to put together," he said.
Research papers cited in the report offer evidence of significant energy reduction using quantum for certain workloads. But the case for quantum energy savings continues to be analyzed, Dukatz added.
Building a social ecosystem
The WEF report favored the creation of an ecosystem to pursue quantum-for-society goals. Such an ecosystem would include industry leaders, government agencies, international organizations, quantum scientists and domain experts in fields such as health and energy. The report envisioned a "glocal" ecosystem with global and local components.
MassTech's ecosystem approach reflects a local pattern. The organization weighs regional economic expansion as an investment criterion when it considers a new ecosystem, Larkin said. Besides the MGHPCC initiative in Holyoke, MassTech's innovation economy investments include ones in the cities of Springfield, Lowell and Lawrence in addition to the state's more obvious technology centers.
"This has a societal benefit that's not concentrated in Cambridge and Boston," he noted.
Larkin said he believes quantum technology will also create opportunities for improving public health within MassTech's purview.
The pursuit of social benefit opportunities requires a wide-ranging ecosystem that pushes beyond the silos of individual quantum technology contributors, Dukatz said. "If we want these [goals] to be in the driver's seat in how the technology is developed and used for good, it has to be a collective effort."
John Moore is a writer for TechTarget Editorial covering the CIO role, economic trends and the IT services industry.
Dig Deeper on IT applications, infrastructure and operations
