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The Global Race To Make a Practical Quantum Computer Just Took a Big Leap Forward (phys.org) 45

Posted by EditorDavid from the quantum-leaps dept.
It's "radically different from other quantum computers" reports Phys.org. The Helios system uses trapped ions — charged atoms suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields.

But it operates with 98 qubits — making it the largest trapped-ion quantum computer built so far. Quantinuum, the company behind the device, is based in Cambridge, U.K., and Broomfield, Colorado. It demonstrated earlier machines operating on 32 qubits in 2023 and 56 qubits in 2025...

It relies on two major advances — one in hardware and one in software. First, the four-way X junction lets the system handle several tasks at once rather than one at a time, which is much faster. That was impossible in earlier QCCD [quantum charge-coupled device] machines, which could only move data back and forth in a single line or loop. Second, judicious use of the freedom offered by the two dimensions of the X junction relies on new classical control software called Helios runtime, which plans the smartest, fastest route for moving and processing the data. Together, these represent a substantial advance in the engineering of quantum computers.

An important consequence is that Helios can perform computations that cannot be performed even on the largest supercomputers using known methods within reasonable amounts of time and power consumption. This demonstrates the ability of this device and its successors to surpass the computational prowess of classical computers — although their algorithms and hardware are rapidly advancing, too. Having said that, Helios' computations have just been random benchmark tests, so the practical importance of this leap forward is still limited. To perform quantum computations of practical importance in science and commerce, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that quantum computers must be enormously bigger and better — of the order of a million qubits.
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The Global Race To Make a Practical Quantum Computer Just Took a Big Leap Forward More

The Global Race To Make a Practical Quantum Computer Just Took a Big Leap Forward

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  • because they are cryptomagically chained to a block on the internet.
    Too bad I only own the block id and not even the image itself.
    Would be great to have that image above my couch instead of the QR code of the id that every jealous friend takes a picture of.

  • What does Scott Aaronson have to say about how this is all nothing to see here, move along?

    • Re:Is Scott Aaronson eating humble pie yet? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @10:19PM (#66303888) Homepage
      I have not had time to look at the Helion claims in detail, but I'm not sure why you think Aaronson should do so. His position a few years ago was that many current claims about practical quantum computing were being exaggerated (including very much the claims by D-Wave with their quantum annealing systems) but that in the near future practical quantum computers were likely. Aaronson has been careful to say that even as he's also been one of the people most vocal in arguing that the burden of proof is on skeptics of quantum computers who would claim it would never be possible. It may help to look at Aaronson's recent post, for example what he says here https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9979 [scottaaronson.blog].

    • Can't speak for anyone else, but just speaking for myself: nothing to see here, move along.

      Ok, not nothing, but we've been getting a "Major Quantum Computing Breakthrough!" news story about every two weeks for the last 20 years. Every tiny, incremental step that might or might not eventually lead to something practical is presented as a major breakthrough. Don't take any of them too seriously. When someone actually makes a real, useful quantum computer, then you should believe it. Until then, ignore the

      • Can you imagine the possibility that by talking about quantum computers we might inspire some young genius to pursue an idea and accelerate the progress? Whereas if we downplay it as you do, it establishes a mood of pessimism that psychologically makes potential researchers give up before even starting?

      • One of the worst offenders is Microsoft, which consistently publishes "major breakthroughs" without having even a 1 qubit quantum computer. Their "qubits" are so stable you can't even interact with them to do computations or disprove that they are qubits.
      • You do realize this very same company announced a deal with Oracle to get these very computers into their cloud data centers to sell time on them to customers within 2027 (i.e. by next year), right? That certainly doesnâ(TM)t sound like more of the same news we have had, but the beginnings of the first ones available for public use outside of lab settingsâ¦.

        • You do realize this quantum computer has only 98 qubits and, to quote the summary, "To perform quantum computations of practical importance in science and commerce, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that quantum computers must be enormously bigger and better -- of the order of a million qubits."

          Oracle is joining in on the hype, but that doesn't make it any closer to a practical tool.

          • I donâ(TM)t think you actually understand the way quantum computing works and how the calculations per second expand with then number of qubits. A 30 qubit computer has the same processing power as a traditional cpu computer that is running at approx 10 Teraflops. With each added logical qubit, the processing power increases exponentially (2^N). Yes, there are problems such as useful life expectancy of the qubit, and that means needing to perform statistical analysis of the results. However, something
            • This is not really accurate. The way qubits work, they don't expand in that simple a way because you cannot just test all arrangements of 1s and 0s in superposition. You can only solve problems with a quantum computer where all the non-solution superpositions carefully cancel out. That's part why for example it is strongly suspected that quantum computers cannot efficiently solve NP-complete problems, or more formally that NP is not contained in BQP. This is also why Shor's algorithm https://en.wikipedia.or [wikipedia.org]

      • And why would they not be majour break throughs?

        If you are researching on a topic for 5 years or more and finally have a result: it is a majour break through.

        Regardless how minuscule you feel about the result.

  • Helios drives a big leap forward in quantum (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @08:44PM (#66303830)

    ... according to Quantinuum, the company that makes Helios. But realistically, it's basically just a different approach to constructing quantum computers that may or may not end up having some practical benefit over other approaches to constructing quantum computers.

    Really, the most important part is at the tail end of TFS, although it's not actually saying anything that we weren't already aware of:

    Having said that, Helios' computations have just been random benchmark tests, so the practical importance of this leap forward is still limited. To perform quantum computations of practical importance in science and commerce, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that quantum computers must be enormously bigger and better — of the order of a million qubits.

  • I'm not convinced QCs will ever work (Score:3)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday August 24, 2026 @03:56AM (#66304054) Homepage

    I have nothing to base my gut feeling on other than I don't believe the laws of physics will give us all the supposed magic parallel information processing for so little energy expenditure in effect almost for free. I'm prepared to be proven wrong but right now I don't think I am.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I have more than a gut feeling. The scaling effort is clearly exponential, hence a total non-starter for anybody that understands computing. It means that the scaling effort is twice exponential (!) worse than what we had for a long time with conventional computers. Actually, since QC effort scales exponentially with the length of the computation, one could argue it is trice exponentially worse. Oh, and effective qbits (those that you can use) are a lot less than the physical qbits, so things are even worse

      • Re:I'm not convinced QCs will ever work (Score:5, Informative)

        by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Monday August 24, 2026 @07:55AM (#66304298) Homepage
        Most of this is wrong or missing important context.

        The scaling effort is clearly exponential, hence a total non-starter for anybody that understands computing

        Scaling in terms of what? The other user was talking about energy usage. This is pretty obviously not the case. Most forms of quantum computers have to be kept incredibly cold, often in miliKelvin. If there were exponential energy use, then adding even in a few more quantum gates would make that energy total massive. But we don't see that. So by what metric are you claiming exponential scaling effort?

        Actually, since QC effort scales exponentially with the length of the computation, one could argue it is trice exponentially worse.

        I don't know what "QC effort" is, but the obvious metric for this is just false. For example, Shor's algorithm, which is the algorithm for factoring using a quantum computer, has a number of qubits which scales slightly worse than the square of the number of digits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm [wikipedia.org].

        At this time, the qc factoring record (!) is 28. And that is with a no-decision algorithm, i.e. one that knew the outcome before. The next larger effort failed. And the 28 needed many, many repetitions to go though.

        This is highly garbled. First, of all the record for factoring cannot be 28, and it cannot be 28 for a pretty obvious reason. Shor's algorithm only works for *odd numbers*. This is a very basic part of how the algorithm functions. The number you are thinking of is 21, not 28. https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4147 [arxiv.org]. Your point about that these have been "no-decision algorithm" is not completely accurate, but is approximately so. They did use a compiled circuit which used prior knowledge of the solution to optimize the arrangement of the qubits.

        But there are also good reasons that factorization records have not expanded. First, Shor's algorithm has high overhead if you trace out the number of gates, and requires very high coherence to even start getting used. It isn't a useful metric of where things are going. This is like looking at the number of people going to space in the 1950s when no one has gone to space and ignoring that rockets had been steadily improving since the 1930s. The coherence time for quantum computers continues to improve. For a while it was improving at a rate of a factor of 10 roughly every 3 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing_scaling_laws#Schoelkopf's_law [wikipedia.org] . That has slowed down in the last decade or so, so it is now improving by about a factor of 3 to 5 every 3 years. Similar remarks apply to other metrics like number of gates. And we know that if you can get error levels down and coherence times long then quantum error correcting codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction [wikipedia.org] works. In particular, the threshold theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_theorem [wikipedia.org] says that once your physical error rate is low enough, the logical error rate can be as low as you want, regardless of the size of the computation.

        • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Most of this is wrong or missing important context.

          Nope. But idiots incapable of learning, like you, are still expecting the golden age tomorrow when it has been announced to manifest very soon for 30 years now.

          QCs are not going to happen. Deal with it.

          • I'm not expecting quantum computers to happen tomorrow. Are you at least capable of understanding that your claim about "28" being the largest number factored was wrong for the basic reason that Shor's algorithm only factors odd numbers?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              I know that 28 was wrong. I read some other paper at the same time and keep confusing the two. That does however mean absolutely nothing, does in no way invalidate my argument and does not give you anything. And since it was not even Shor's algorithm that was run (due to absence of decisions), it means even less.

              However, you seem to be totally ignorant with regards to algorithmic complexity. That means you do not even have the very basics needed to be in this exchange.

              • I know that 28 was wrong.

                Great. Progress. Now here's the important thing: If you understood Shor's algorithm you would know that 28 couldn't possibly have been the number. So this should cause you to conclude that you are in general overconfident about how much you know or understand about how quantum computers would function. This doesn't mean you are necessarily wrong, but it should indicate that you are overconfident here or could you use a more detailed introduction or refresher on the topic. My preferred recommendation is Aaro

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        You'll find a considerable number of elder geeks spent years gainfully employed working on 4 bit MCUs.

        The key details here are the number of qubits steadily improving, and that throwaway comment about needing millions of qubits should be disregarded as utter nonsense. Sure, it's gonna be a while before "gcc -march=quantum" is an option, but Grover's algorithm has a space complexity of O(n); Shor's is O((log n)^2). Hand-turned implementations of those will be gutting virtually all of modern cryptography lo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Wrong. The number of Qbits is not scaling. It is slowly very going up. It would need to go up double-exponentially (!) to even give us liner improvement in computing power per unit of time. It does not even go up linearly with time, it is _slower_. Hence we will never even see enough effective Qbits that can stay entangled long enough to attack currently secure cryptography. The Sun will explode before that happens.

          That said, QCs will _never_ break AES256. This universe is to small for that aver happening.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pla ( 258480 )
            Is 98 greater than 56? Yes? Okay then. It's still going up. So much vitriol from someone posting nothing but bare assertion - Cite please, beyond your fee-fees?

            Let me 'splain it to you in simple language. The number of qubits doesn't need to scale exponentially on the short term for quantum computing to pose a very real threat; it only needs to hit the mid hundreds. As I mentioned, Grover's algorithm is O(n) - Meaning once we hit 256 qubits (plus some change for overhead), SHA256 is substantially weakened

    • I have nothing to base my gut feeling on other than I don't believe the laws of physics will give us all the supposed magic parallel information processing for so little energy expenditure in effect almost for free. I'm prepared to be proven wrong but right now I don't think I am.

      It isn't unreasonable to have this gut reaction to how quantum computers are described frequently to the general public. But one important thing to realize is that they don't let you do magic parallel information processing. There's this way of describing them as "trying all solutions at once," or things like that. But a quantum computer cannot in general do that, since if one has all potential "solutions" one needs some way of making sure that the non-solutions cancel out. In that context. there are some

  • And how many effective Qbits are these? (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday August 24, 2026 @04:41AM (#66304100)

    And how long a calculation does the entanglement survive?

    Making a big leap when you are very, very far from the finishing lien and do not even know whether it exists means not a lot.

  • Another incremental step forward (Score:4, Informative)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Monday August 24, 2026 @08:48AM (#66304350)
    It's another incremental step forward; one of many more that will be required before a QC can be developed that is able to do anything of practical interest that cannot be done by digital computers at least as efficiently and far more easily and cheaply.

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