We (and others), on the other hand , are in the camp that believe that it is possible to build useful NISQ
(noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era applications that provide commercial advantage. To achieve this, high quality gate fidelities are required. We believe that gives us an advantage in the short term because IonQs trapped ion systems have
naturally higher fidelities than competing systems. We can also leverage IonQs sizeable cash position and cash from early sales to fund further development towards fault-tolerant systems.
It is worth noting that over the last couple of years, several companies originally in the first camp have come over to our point of view, acknowledging the
potential power of NISQ applications.
Within IonQs application group, we are increasingly focused on finding and building these applications.
Why does IonQ use trapped ion qubits in its quantum systems?
Trapped ions are a relatively mature technology with the highest native gate fidelities known to the industry. IonQs systems are also uniquely capable of
all-to-all connectivity and have a comparatively easy path to room temperature quantum computing and networking. We believe that with our new barium ion qubits, it is
possible to get close to 99.99% average two-qubit gate fidelity. We also believe that as applications become larger, the
all-to-all connectivity enabled by our unique architecture will allow larger applications to run with reduced qubit count. Last, our ability to network quantum
processing units using room temperature room temperature optical fiber will allow us to scale the number of qubits quickly.
You might have heard me say
that in the longer term, other qubit modalities might become interesting. Each qubit modality has a unique set of challenges and risk profiles to overcome to achieve fault tolerant quantum computing at scale, and we remain highly confident in the
advantages of trapped ions.
Nevertheless, I like to think we are pragmatists, similar to the early days at Apple. At the time, Macs used a Motorola 68K
family processor. After several years, they moved to PowerPC. I assume that Apple thought the Motorola processor was the best available in that particular time period, but evolved to use the PowerPC when the technical and business landscape made it
more advantageous.
We will continue to monitor progress of other qubit modalities as they make progress over time. And we will continue to ask ourselves,
Are we on the best horse in this race? In our teams opinion, that answer is a strong yes.
What does IonQ think of other announced
breakthroughs in quantum?
First, its an exciting time in quantum. Progress is accelerating on all fronts.
In quantum newsfeeds, it seems like someone announces a breakthrough in quantum almost every day. However, the path from the lab to the market is time- and
capital-intensive. And we have yet to see a silver bulletmost of the breakthrough announcements we see have some risk or caveat that still has yet to be overcome.