Nobel Laureate John Martinis discusses the technical caliber and progress of Chinese quantum computing research groups compared to the US.
Opinion
Martinis: Current quantum computers are not big or reliable enough yet
“They aren't really big enough to be useful yet. They have to get bigger, and they have to get better. Less noise.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Martinis: Useful quantum computers will arrive in 8 to 10 years
“And what we want to do, and it's a timeline of many other groups, is to do something in, let's say in the next eight, 10 years, something like that.”
Assertion Supported
Martinis: Google's 53-qubit experiment successfully demonstrated quantum supremacy
“We published this quantum supremacy experiment with 53 qubits, where we made a lot of qubits, and we made them really good, and, you know, fast and whatever, so that we could run some algorithm, mathematical algorithm, that what, we produced some output that w…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Martinis: General-purpose quantum computers will require one million qubits
“And because of that, you're talking about a million qubit quantum computers to be general purpose and solve really hard problems. There might be some million. A million is a good round number for it. Maybe a little bit more. And right now we're at, you know, a…”
Disclosure
Martinis: China lacks access to the 300mm fabrication tools for quantum
“We're going to be using applied materials and the modern fabrication processes that they have, which on 300 millimeter tools, you know, you can't get in China, for example.”
Disclosure
Martinis: Google offered the funding and retention needed for quantum hardware
“Although academia was great, it would be hard to get the team together and keep them together for a long time to build this complicated machine, and Google had the money, ok?”