If you’re saving up to buy a quantum computer, don’t hold your breath. Oliver and Chiaverini agree that quantum information processing will hit the commercial market only gradually in the coming years and decades as the science and engineering advance.
In the meantime, Chiaverini notes another application of the trapped ion technology he’s developing: highly precise optical clocks, which could aid navigation and GPS. For his part, Oliver envisions a linked classical-quantum system, where a classical machine could run most of an algorithm, sending select calculations for the quantum machine to run before its qubits decohere. In the longer term, quantum computers could operate with more independence as improved error-correcting codes allow them to function indefinitely.
“Quantum computing has been the future for several years,” computer science engineering says. But now the technology appears to be reaching an inflection point, shifting from solely a scientific problem to a joint science and engineering one — “quantum engineering” — a shift aided in part by Chiaverini, Oliver, and dozens of other researchers at MIT’s Center for Quantum Engineering (CQE) and elsewhere.
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