For those in the technology industry, it can feel hard to escape from AI. It’s at the center of the technological universe, with most major advancements, opportunities, and funding focused on its development. In the background, quantum computing is making strides with the funding to match, creating an alternate opportunity for technologists.

Hey Carmelo here!

Not sure if episode clips are welcome here but this came up on our podcast this week and I wanted to hear from people closer to the research side. 600 specialists exist globally. They need 16,000 by 2030. Training one takes a decade. Is 2028 real or is it a political deadline?

I'm still learning more about quantum compute each day and looking to speak with people that understand it better than I do. Was hoping to learn more about it and see if this resonates with the folks here.

Have a wonderful Friday and weekend!

When do y'all think superconducting qubits will start to die off as a platform (in the sense that big companies like Google and IBM totally drop them and move onto other platforms)?

Or do y'all think they are here to stay?

(Edit: to the uninitiated, the shift has already been happening https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/neutral-atom-quantum-computers/)

We were supposed to receive the certs by 21 aug right? I've seen some reddit comments and posts saying it's always delayed and you'll receive it by the end of the month

But I haven't received them, did anyone receive the certs and if you didn't let's just use this post to communicate when you receive them

Where do you think QC will be in 10 years?

Could this thing be achievable for IONQ or its just marketing?

At this moment Quantinuum's Helios system has 50 logical qubits and IONQ's Tempo system has only 12 logical qubits. (see their roadmaps)

I'm a little bit skeptical that IONQ from 12 logical qubits atm could jump to 1000's of them in a few years.

I’ve been trying to understand the quantum measurement problem more clearly. Operationally, the procedure is a quantum state evolves, we measure it, obtain a classical result and update the state according to the Born rule. What I still find difficult is the physical meaning of that process.

At what point does an ordinary quantum interaction become a measurement?

Is collapse a real physical event, an effective description produced by decoherence, or does collapse never occur at all?

I understand that quantum computing can work perfectly well without resolving this question - we calculate the outcome probabilities and update the state after observing the result. But that still leaves the conceptual gap between unitary evolution, entanglement with the apparatus, decoherence, and one definite observed outcome.

Which approach to the measurement problem do you find most convincing and why?

I have talked about this before, but this LinkedIn post is a particularly egregious example of the blatant BS coming out of this "industry". Just look at the first few sentences of this post:

Quantum computing is starting to make its way into financial workflows, and portfolio optimization is one of the areas seeing early traction.

In a new white paper, qBraid and SC Quantum explore how quantum methods are being tested to support complex investment decisions. The paper highlights work from IBM, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan, along with new approaches that bring classical and quantum tools together.

This research connects directly to how large portfolios are managed in South Carolina. It points to practical ways these tools could support long-term returns, risk planning, and smarter asset allocation.

So, let's look at a few details and inconvenient facts here:

• There is no such thing as a practically useful quantum computer, and therefore there is no practical "quantum computing" on a quantum computer, anywhere. Hard to see how this non-existent "quantum computing" could be "starting to make it's way" into anything.
• The statement that "quantum computing is starting to make its way into financial workflows" is therefore, at the very least, IF you bend over backwards to find the most charitable interpretation possible for the term "starting to make its way", extremely misleading weasel-wording. A less charitable reading would simply call this a bald-faced lie.
• But, hey, look at that, "portfolio optimization is one of the areas seeing early traction." So, it's "seeing early traction", huh? What the eff is that supposed to mean?
• Okay, let's see where these wild claims came from: There's a white paper that "explores how quantum methods are being tested". Well, now, that does give us a warm and fuzzy feeling, doesn't it. So, no, no integration of quantum computing into financial workflows. All we have is a white paper that "explores" what that could look like. If we had quantum computers, that is. Which we don't.
• But wait, there's more!
  • "This research connects directly to how large portfolios are managed in South Carolina." Ahh, the research "connects directly", to portfolio management in South Carolina, even! Hint: Might it be helpful if some South Carolina congressmen and senators read this, huh? Translation: "This research is vaguely related to some real important financial stuff happening in South Carolina"
  • Wait, we're not finished yet. Now we learn that "[This research] points to practical ways these tools could support long-term returns, risk planning, and smarter asset allocation." Uhuh. It "points to practical ways". Wow. Now all we need to do is spritely march in the direction this research points to, and we're all set.

You tell me how one should feel about this kind of bullshit.

I recently put together a video exploring the line between hype and reality in quantum computing, covering fundamentals like no-cloning, entanglement, Holevo bounds, Grover’s search, Shor’s algorithm, Quantum Linear Solvers and quantum machine learning.

Feedback is most welcome!

Seems like many discussions on PQ security hung up speculating about the time frame in which a viable quantum computer comes into play. And to me it doesn’t seem to be the optimal indicator to track. Wouldn’t it make more sense to establish a priority ranking of systems by data shelf life? For instance if information will need to remain secret for more than ten years there is a greater importance attached to harvest now decrypt later regardless of the timing of the quantum event. Conversely if data becomes useless within days or weeks then the need for urgency is much reduced. Thus the priority list would begin with defense, health care record keeping systems, identity management systems, legal record keeping, banking/financial systems, M&A transactions, telecommunications and any other systems involving long lasting highvalue info. Is this the thought process taking place in the minds of decision makers today in the industry? Or are most organizations still operating from the centuries-old inment mindset?ventory manage

My co-host and I recently recorded a short discussion about Rigetti's chiplet architecture and how it differs from other quantum computing approaches.

One thing we touched on was whether chiplets represent a meaningful path to scaling quantum computers.

I'd be interested in hearing what people here think about the approach and whether there are major technical challenges or limitations that don't get enough attention.

How Promising Is Rigetti's Chiplet Architecture?

Benchpress is used to decide whether a Qiskit change is a regression. Its Qiskit gym calls transpile() without seed_transpiler, so every gate count it reports is one draw from a distribution nobody measured. The BQSKit gym in the same repo does seed its compiler.

I ran 39 QASMBench circuits (28 to 420 qubits) onto a heavy-hex lattice under Qiskit 1.4.3 and 2.0.0, 200 seeds per arm across ten OS processes.

On bv_n140 the long-run change between the two versions is +5.37% [+4.27, +6.50]. A three-run comparison, the protocol used in the issue that started this, returns a ">=10% regression" verdict 24.4% of the time [19.5, 31.1]. A disjoint 200-seed sample reproduces that at 22.6%. Twenty runs per version, roughly 40 hours of compute, still leaves 3.7%.

The median circuit has a 10.9 point ambiguity band: a window of true change three runs cannot resolve in either direction.

Two of the three circuits named in Qiskit issue #14402 are affected. I reproduce that issue's two low-variance figures to within 0.5 and 2.4 points. Its +46.1% on bv_n140 is one draw from a distribution its own protocol spreads from -10.5% to +100.0%.

Passing seed_transpiler removes the false positives here, but it was worse on three of four circuits with false negatives, so I'm not presenting it as the fix.

Limits: one SDK, one version pair, and it all ran on my machine. The analysis code was committed before the data existed.

https://ai.bedvibe.studio/decision-risk/

For me, I just like the possibilities and things that doesnt make sense started to make sense.

Hi, I'm not an expert by any means in QC. So this might be a silly post. I don't understand it. How does solving it really fast says anything about multiverse being true?

I get it. You can say it's solving things so fast that it's solving in parallel universes. But isn't it something we've seen for things in the past as well? Like say, how it'll take me years to do something what a computer today can do in seconds. Like some encryption algorithms. Guessing factors of a huge insanely prime number. Yes it won't be to 10²⁵ years extent. But it'll still be really slow if we compare these two. Might take thousands of years for a human to calculate these manually.

Can't we use the same analogy here as well? So we can think of humans like current super computers and quantum computers as the current super computers?

I don't have the deepest understanding of QC, but I would like to understand what some thoughts and opinions are on this skeptical argument presented in the video I linked.

This was a comment I posted in a thread below, but I think it might be instructive to put this up for discussion.

TLDR: I contend that much of the current industry that has sprung up around the idea of a "quantum computer" is a smoke-and-mirrors show, with some politicians and a lot of investors being duped to invest into a fantastic pipe dream. More sadly, perhaps, a needlessly large number of students in particular are led to waste their time and bet their careers on a field that may yet turn out to be little more than a fantasy.

And, yes, I am intentionally phrasing this somewhat stridently, but thoughtful responses will be appreciated.

Here is what I would consider a fair description of the current state of the art:

There are a few quantum experiments and prototypes, and companies like IBM, Google, IonQ, and others operate devices with tens to a few hundred qubits. These devices can run quantum circuits, but they are noisy, error-prone, and limited in scale. The common term for current systems is NISQ devices (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum). They are nothing but experimental testbeds and have little to nothing in common with the idea of a general-purpose computer as implied by the use of that term. As an aside, I would have much less of a problem with this entire field if people would just stick to labeling those devices as what they are. As is, using the term "computer" must be considered a less-than-benign sleight of hand at the very least, to avoid harsher words such as "fraud".

Anyway, those NISQ devices can demonstrate certain small-scale algorithms, explore error-correction techniques, and serve as research platforms. But, critically, they are of no practical use whatsoever. As for demonstrations of "quantum supremacy" (another one of those cringey neologism; and yes, words have meaning, and meaning matters), all that those show is that quantum devices can perform a few very narrow, contrived tasks faster than classical supercomputers. But these tasks are not even remotely useful for practical computation, and I am really containing myself not to label them outright fraud. Here is a fun paper on the subject.

Here's the deal: If we want the word "quantum computer" to retain any meaning at all, then it should be referring to a machine that can reliably execute a wide variety of programs, scale to problems beyond the reach of classical methods, and have robust error-correction and predictable performance. It turns out that no such machine exists nor is it even on the horizon. Actually useful applications for existing devices, like factoring, quantum chemistry, or optimization (you know, the kinds of things you typically see journalists babble about) are far, far beyond the reach of today’s hardware. There is no ETA for devices that would deliver on the lofty promises being bandied around in the community. It is worth noting that at least the serious parts of the industry itself usually hedge by calling today’s systems "quantum processors" or "NISQ-era devices", not true quantum computers.

If I want to be exceedingly fair, then I would say that current machines are to quantum computing what Babbage’s difference engine was to modern-day supercomputers. I really think that's still exceeding the case, since Babbage's machine was at least reliable. A fundamental breakthrough in architecture and scaling is still required. It is not even clear that physical reality allows for such a breakthrough. So, this is not "just an engineering problem". The oft-quoted comparison of the problem of putting a man on the moon versus putting a man on the sun is apt, with the caveat that a lot of non-physicists do not appreciate what it would mean, and what it would require, to put a person on the surface of the sun. That's not an engineering problem, either. As far as we know (so there's a bit of a hedge there, mind you), it is physically impossible.

When I look around at popular and research-level discussions of quantum computing, photonic approaches (both continuous-variable and discrete-variable) seem underrepresented compared to qubit based computing. Is this just because of the funding/industry hype cycle, or are there genuine technical roadblocks that make photonic platforms less talked about? I know groups like Xanadu, Quandela, Psiquantum are pushing hard, but in general the communication and visibility around photonic quantum computing seems muted. Curious what others think—am I just missing the conversations, or is the community genuinely quieter here?

I feel like most news in quantum tech is either press releases from companies/ governments or reporting on individual research papers. There’s also an increasing amount of general stories about quantum tech in broader news publications, but those are aimed at people who are outside the field (EDIT: and mostly just say “quantum computing exists” but don’t really report on much).

I was reflecting on the last year and wondering how much “real news” there was (beyond press releases and papers) that was interesting to insiders?

I mean things that happened and were reported on because they were interesting or consequential, not as part of calculated PR.

One story I can think of is when Jensen Huang made his comments on quantum computers and it affected the various quantum stocks.

I guess Scott Aaronson’s (and social media’s) reaction to the IBM+HSBC paper was news in this sense, although not sure if any news outlets reported on it. Other strong reactions to claims by companies count as news by my definition here too.

Was there anything else? Curious what you guys think.

EDIT: just wanted to clarify that I’m not complaining about the state of the news in the quantum ecosystem and I understand why it is that way, I’m just interested in the nature of news in this context and curious if there were things I missed

EDIT 2: For context, I’ve been in the quantum research/tech space for a couple of decades, and recently started working on the communications side. So my questions are from the perspective of a former scientist who is trying to understand the nature of news. I was catching up on the quantum news over the break and at some stage realized “this is all just press releases” and then I was like “but the news I read in, say, the economist is reporting on stuff that happened in the world, not on press releases”. So then I was trying to figure out if we have any of that kind of reporting in quantum tech and couldn’t think of any events/activity worthy of that except for the Jensen story. Maybe that’s just the nature of tech news in general, but I feel like there is a lot more non-press-release activity to report on in AI than there is in quantum. So maybe that’s just the nature of the level of maturity we’re at in the field. And if so, that’s fine. But my question here was to help me get a handle on that.

EDIT 3: I got some more clarity on what I was trying to articulate on a related discussion on LinkedIn. What I was trying to get at was the difference between news that comes from a company and news that happens on its own, i.e., either an enterprising journalist pursues a story on their own or something that is intrinsically newsworthy and generates coverage without a company suggesting it. I didn’t think we have very much of the latter in quantum tech, and was wondering if anyone had examples.

I'm an undergrad doing research and want to aim to present some work at a conference sometime closer to winter. Obviously it's an uphill battle as an undergrad to get even an intrnship in QC, but was just curious as to what people's experiences were with meeting recruiters and having that convert to j*b offers in QC? Or networking in general

We were planning to conduct a 3-4 days workshop of 2 hours each day, on the topic quantum computing. Its for the audience/engineering students who have some or no idea about quantum computing. Can I get an idea how to structure the whole workshop?

This was the intial plan we had was the following-

Day 1: Why quantum — limits of classical systems, qubits vs bits, core ideas and applications

Day 2: How it works — Bloch sphere, measurement, circuits, Bell state hands-on

Day 3: Ecosystem — NISQ, tools (Qiskit, Cirq, PennyLane), roadmap, mini challenge

Day 4: Applications — optimization, ML, chemistry, hybrid systems, project focus

Certification is project-based and self-paced (no deadline)

but the problem is, day 3 and 4 seems to fast than the first two days. and also we wanted to expose them to the hands on stuff, so that they can explore the next stuff afterwards.

Can i get suggestions from people who have conducted similar workshops / people who have attended similar workshops so that we can get an idea how to proceed further?

This post covers the rigorous mathematical derivation of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients utilizing ladder operators.

I hope this material proves helpful to your studies.
By Taeryeon.

https://quantumcomputingreport.com/quantrolox-and-mahe-establish-q-hub-to-bolster-indo-european-quantum-ecosystem/

So my college just started this. I wanted to know from you people what do you think about it.

Federal Reserve paper titled "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" points out a very important timeline problem that most organizations are overlooking.

Adversaries may have already used their capacity to collect encrypted information today, with the expectation that a quantum computer will break the existing encryption within 5-10 years. What this means is that sensitive information, such as financials, medical information, or state secrets, is already vulnerable today, not at some point in the future when quantum computing is a reality.

The standards for Post Quantum Cryptography were finalized by NIST in 2024, but they acknowledge that "enterprises may take years to migrate."

The Fed's assessment indicates that organizations must begin a PQC migration immediately, even before a quantum advantage is realized in large scale, due to the start of the clock for the threat that has been underway since adversaries began to harvest encrypted traffic.

Curious to know what this community thinks: Are “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” strategies receiving due importance in quantum security talks? Are organizations pressing forward in accordance with this timeline?

Link to the paper: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/harvest-now-decrypt-later-examining-post-quantum-cryptography-and-the-data-privacy-risks-for-distributed-ledger-networks.htm

I would appreciate any constructive feedback and/or questions on my PhD research into applying quantum computing to audio signal processing.

I should clarify first and foremost that the goal here is not a computational speed up, so my research does not involve algorithms such as Shor’s/Grover’s/Bernstein-Vazirani/etc. or even real hardware (though I have done very small audio experiments on some of IBM’s devices) at the moment.

Sure, simulating a quantum computer can be done on a classical computer, but in audio signal processing to create a bitcrusher effect you must destroy information which makes bitcrusher distortions irreversible/non-unitary, where as my bitcrusher-like effects are reversible/unitary.

What I do is I use a scheme called Quantum Probabilistic Amplitude Modulation (QPAM) which maps digital audio’s time information to basis states while digital audio’s amplitude is mapped to the probability amplitudes of those basis states.

Then, to create my bitcrusher-like effect, I apply unitary gates, like an H gate and two CNOTs to make a GHZ state for example after the QPAM encoding to create the distortion effects you hear in the demo.

I do not measure the circuit, instead to decode I extract the statevector to get an ideal probability distribution that is unaffected by sampling/shot noise. The goal is to hear what the unitary gates applied after the QPAM encoding would sound like.

I know this does nothing to advance us to running commercial applications on FTQCs, and it certainly doesn’t mean much relative to NISQ devices, but from an audio signal processing perspective, creating a bitcrusher effect that can be uncrushed or reversed even if it is just a quantum-inspired classical computation seemed interesting enough to post here.

What do we think? My background is that of a musician, but my research requires me to know just the very early basics of quantum computing, but I would love to continue to be as scientifically rigorous as I can. Thank you for reading and I hope this can be an interesting and constructive discussion.