Intel’s quantum computing efforts take a major step forward
It's been almost three months since Intel announced a 17-qubit superconducting chip, meant to pave the way for a future powered by quantum computers. Today at CES, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich showed off its latest superconducting test chip, the 49-qubit "Tangle Lake." Off the bat, let's be clear: quantum computing is still quite theoretical, and it's estimated that we'll need to over a million qubits to have something viable. Dr. Michael Mayberry, corporate vice president and managing director of Intel Labs, predicts it will be "five to seven years" before the industry even begins to tackle the problems of engineering such vastly complex chips. In addition to working on superconducting qubits, Intel is also investing in "spin qubits," a relatively new development which requires (bear with us) quantum control of the electron and the nuclear spin of a single atom in silicon. The benefit of spin qubit chips is they should be much smaller th...