The IT company and the university (pictured) say they can now make highly accurate quantum computers with only 10,000 physical qubits, just 10% of the previous number.
They added: “[The] new architecture represents a significant milestone toward the construction of a quantum computer with 10,000 physical qubits and 64 logical qubits, accelerating progress toward the realization of genuine fault-tolerant quantum computation.”
The breakthrough, if their own estimates are right, comes from Fujitsu and Osaka University’s Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology (QIQB) and its Fujitsu Quantum Computing Joint Research Division, set up in 2021.
It is, they said, “a new, highly efficient analogue rotation quantum computing architecture, representing a significant milestone toward the realization of practical quantum computing”.
The importance of quantum computing to the telecoms and data centre industries are, firstly, that quantum technology can be used to break the security systems that they have used for decades – because quantum computers are fast.
There is a suspicion in the data industry and in intelligence worlds that encrypted traffic is being stored for the arrival of new quantum computers.
Secondly, quantum technology will be able to make future systems much more secure.
Fujitsu and Osaka University said the new architecture reduces the number of physical qubits required for quantum error correction – a prerequisite for the realization of fault-tolerant quantum computing – by 90% from 1 million to 10,000 qubits.
This will allow research to embark on the construction of a quantum computer with a performance of approximately 100,000 times that of the peak performance of conventional high performance computers, they said.
“Fujitsu and Osaka University will further refine this new architecture to lead the development of quantum computers in the early FTQC [fault tolerant quantum computation] era, with the aim of applying quantum computing applications to a wide range of practical societal issues including material development and finance.”
They said: “Quantum computers in the early FTQC era using conventional architecture for quantum error correction can only conduct calculations on a very limited scale below that of classical computers, as they work with a maximum of about 10,000 physical qubits, a number far below that required for genuine, fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
But now, “Fujitsu and Osaka University developed a new, highly efficient analogue rotation quantum computing architecture that is able to significantly reduce the number of physical qubits required for quantum error correction, and enable even quantum computers with 10,000 physical qubits to perform better than current classical computers, accelerating progress toward the realization of genuine, fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
