A Quantum Era

What lies ahead as we move forward toward a quantum era? This is the question one new report looks to answer. Riverlane announced its 2024 Quantum Error Correction Report, which aims to provide an understanding of the current state of QEC (quantum error correction) development and the opportunities and challenges ahead.

This guide draws on public data from 29 hardware companies, including interviews with 12 global industry experts. Let’s take a look at the state of quantum today, starting with this report and looking at other recent news.

Here’s what we know. In 2024, QEC gained significant momentum as big tech, governments, and quantum companies came together to affirm its crucial role. From research to roadmaps to funding strategies, the quantum computing community and its stakeholders united in pursuing quantum error correction. Major research breakthroughs in the last year from companies such as Google, AWS, IBM and Microsoft and Quantinuum have shown that QEC is now achievable across all major qubit types.

Every quantum hardware company roadmap released in the last 12 months included QEC, demonstrating that every hardware company needs QEC capability by 2028. 

To be clear, there are challenges that stand in our quantum future. For one, managing the fragile nature of quantum qubits. Also, every quantum company profiled cited qubit fidelity, or accuracy, as the leading QEC challenge.

Still, we are seeing many advancements from companies such as Google to IBM. Of the 25 quantum hardware companies profiled, the majority (66%) are actively implementing QEC, and half of those companies are collaborating with external third parties on their QEC implementations.

One of the recent advances comes from IBM, as it has announced it is advancing quantum safe technology with IBM Guardium Data Security Center, which allows companies to protect data in any environment throughout its full lifecycle and with unified controls.

IBM Guardium Data Security Center also features IBM Guardium Quantum Safe, which is software that helps clients to protect encrypted data from the potential risk of future cyberattacks driven by bad actors who gain access to cryptographically relevant quantum computers. IBM Guardium Quantum Safe builds upon expertise from IBM Research—including IBM’s post-quantum cryptography algorithms—and IBM Consulting.

IBM Consulting’s Quantum Safe Transformation Services leverage these technologies to help organizations in several different ways including things such as to define risks, inventory and prioritize them, confront them—and then scale the process. IBM Consulting’s cybersecurity bench includes professionals with experience in cryptography and quantum safe technology. Examples of clients are in telecommunications, finance, government, and other industries leverage IBM Quantum Safe Transformation Services to help safeguard their organizations against future risks and present risks like harvest now, decrypt later.

Certainly, this is one example, but the bottomline is we are entering a new era of innovation, and quantum is advancing, which could potentially open new opportunities in the future.

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