D-Wave Systems today unveiled the roadmap for its 5,000-qubit quantum computer. Components of D-Wave’s next-generation quantum computing platform will come to market between now and mid-2020 via ongoing quantum processing unit (QPU) and cloud-delivered software updates. The complete system will be available through cloud access and for on-premise installation in mid-2020.

Binary digits (bits) are the basic units of information in classical computing while quantum bits (qubits) make up quantum computing. Bits are always in a state of 0 or 1, while qubits can be in a state of 0, 1, or a superposition of the two. Quantum computing leverages qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave has been developing its own quantum computers that use quantum annealing.

D-Wave is mainly focused on solving optimization problems, so its quantum computers can’t be directly compared to the competition. Indeed, many have questioned whether D-Wave’s systems have quantum properties, and thus performance that classical computers can’t match. In the meantime, D-Wave continues to improve and sell its systems.

Gating—controlling the state of one qubit conditioned on the state of another—is a key procedure in all quantum information processors. As the scale of quantum processors increases, the qubits will need to interact over larger and larger distances, which presents an experimental challenge in solid-state architectures. Wan et al. implemented the 20-year-old theoretical proposal of quantum gate teleportation that allows separated qubits to interact effectively. They deterministically teleported a controlled-NOT gate between two computational qubits in spatially separated zones in a segmented ion trap, demonstrating a feasible route toward scalable quantum information processors.

Science, this issue p. 875

Large-scale quantum computers will require quantum gate operations between widely separated qubits. A method for implementing such operations, known as quantum gate teleportation (QGT), requires only local operations, classical communication, and shared entanglement. We demonstrate QGT in a scalable architecture by deterministically teleporting a controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate between two qubits in spatially separated locations in an ion trap. The entanglement fidelity of our teleported CNOT is in the interval (0.845, 0.872) at the 95% confidence level. The implementation combines ion shuttling with individually addressed single-qubit rotations and detections, same- and mixed-species two-qubit gates, and real-time conditional operations, thereby demonstrating essential tools for scaling trapped-ion quantum computers combined in a single device.

Practical quantum computers may be another step closer to reality – and like so many technologies, we have graphene to thank for it. The bits of information in quantum computers (qubits) can famously exist in two states at once, and now researchers from MIT and other institutions have managed to record just how long that superposition state can last in a qubit made of graphene.

Quantum computers encode information in delicate superposition states of quantum bits, or ‘qubits’.

The quantum computing effort at Honeywell appears to be heating up. Over the last several months, the company has announced a series of new developments in its trapped ion quantum computer research, which suggests that it is close to launching its first system.

If you weren’t aware that Honeywell had a quantum computing program, you are not alone. While the occasional terse news statement about this effort is posted on the company’s quantum solutions page, the tech giant has otherwise been rather tight-lipped about its plans in this area. A request from us for more information was met with: “We don’t have anything further to add on this front.”

Since October of last year, Honeywell has been offering these smaller tidbits on a regular basis. In November, the company revealed it had started testing its first-generation qubit devices, followed in January by the claim that it had “demonstrated record-breaking high fidelity quantum operations” on its trapped-ion qubits. In March, it announced it had demonstrated “parallel operating zones” on the device, which it believes will provide faster execution and more flexible qubit connectivity.