The Blueprint To Build A Quantum Computer Has Been Public Since 2017

Google may have solely taken credit for quantum supremacy, but the first blueprint for a quantum computer was a joint effort of international scientists, and it was made public in 2017.

The huge breakthrough has long been predicted to have an as large and universal effect as the regular computer on science, industry, and commerce. What sets this finding apart is that it provides an actual blueprint on how to build a quantum computer, the one that can solve more problems and at a faster speed than any other machine known to human before.

When the machine is at work, it can save lives by creating new medicines, answer scientific questions that have been puzzling scientists, and uncover the mysteries of the outer space or the deep sea, things that may require regular computers billions of years to work on.

The blueprint is possible thanks to a new invention that lets quantum bits to travel between quantum computing modules, thus giving the machine the near arbitrary large computational processing powers.

The study proposed using electric fields instead of fibre optic connections for transmission between the computer modules. The field will allow ions (charged atoms) to be transmitted as a speed 100,000 times faster than fibre link.

The blueprint is the brainchild of scientists from the USA (Google), the UK (University of Sussex), Denmark (Aarhus University), Japan (RIKEN), and Germany (Siegen University).

Professor Winfried Hensinger is the head of the University of Sussex’s Ion Quantum Technology Group, and he was the lead scientist of this study. He said that for many years, people believed that constructing a quantum computer was impossible, but the team’s research had proven that it was doable, and they also came up with a blueprint to build one on a large scale.

Bjoern Lekitsch, the lead author of the research, shared that for the team it was important to list the technical challenges and came up with solutions for them.

What the team did next was to construct an actual quantum computer based on the blueprint at the University of Sussex.

This study was part of the UK government to further develop quantum technology for industrial use. The invention of the team requiring only voltages to microchips was used in the place of billions of laser beams needed for the quantum computing operations.

The blueprint is public to make sure that scientists around the world can contribute to the development of this technology, as well as encouraging industrial applications.