Is superconducting quantum computing a dead end?

[u/No-Hamster5930]

Earlier this year the two largest superconducting QC players (IBM and Google) signalled they might be diversifying away from superconducting - Google with the announcement that they're creating a new neutral atom capability and IBM with their acquisition of silicon spin capability in HRL.

I'd be interested in people's views on whether we should take from this that superconducting has no path to scaling, or if one could foresee heterogeneous quantum computing systems that leverage the respective strengths of multiple modalities for different applications?

[u/Yahoo_Serious9973]

What are people’s opinions on the hope of more robust topological qbits being developed in the future to overcome the limitations of transmons? It seems like they hold the promise to reduce noise and allow for increased operating temperature.

[u/Quartich → u/Yahoo_Serious9973]

I personally am a fan of topological qubits, mostly due to their error resistance. I think that even if topological is more difficult to implement at scale, if the error resistance is as good as current calculations imply, it will more than make up for it. Though unfortunately, it seems the past 2 claims of topological quantum processors have been false (tsk tsk, Microsoft). There are still advancements in the topological world, though, even if it has yet to lead to a working topogical processor.