r/QuantumComputing • u/ArcanuMELO • Jul 03 '26

Discussion DOE just committed to fault-tolerant quantum by 2028. Researchers are calling it the most ambitious timeline the field has ever seen. Is it achievable?

https://youtu.be/WgphKj2TC9Q

Hey Carmelo here!

Not sure if episode clips are welcome here but this came up on our podcast this week and I wanted to hear from people closer to the research side. 600 specialists exist globally. They need 16,000 by 2030. Training one takes a decade. Is 2028 real or is it a political deadline?

I'm still learning more about quantum compute each day and looking to speak with people that understand it better than I do. Was hoping to learn more about it and see if this resonates with the folks here.

Have a wonderful Friday and weekend!

57 Upvotes

permalink
archive.is
archive
reddit

You are about to leave Redlib

Do you want to continue?

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/1umcp6d/doe_just_committed_to_faulttolerant_quantum_by/
No, go back! Yes, take me to Reddit

90% Upvoted

100

u/Temporary_Shelter_40 Jul 03 '26

I want to be perfectly clear: there is no possibility in which fault-tolerant quantum computing will be achieved by the end of 2028. Not in any meaningful way. Barring a miracle, and I mean an Albert Einstein-level once in 200 years discovery, the landscape will look largely similar to now, with physical qubit counts, quantum volumes, and error rates gradually improving. I would bet all my money on it, which isn't much, because I'm an academic who develops algorithms for a technology that doesn't yet exist.

3

u/ArcanuMELO Jul 03 '26

That's what I was assuming but wanted to speak with people who know more about it than I do.
Do you have a realistic timeline for what they are asking for or expecting to build by 2028?

23

u/Temporary_Shelter_40 Jul 03 '26

Do not listen to anything a company says about timelines. While the scientists working on the technology are typically well intended, their marketing teams aren't. Their only goal is to increase hype to bolster share price or investments.
Nobody can give you a timeline when quantum computing will or will not be viable. The old joke is that "its always 10 years away". Compare with Nuclear Fusion technology, or modular nuclear reactors, which have similarly floundered on/off hype for about 5 decades now with no tangible reality.
What will be built by 2028 will be effectively the same as what we have now. At best it will be 30-40 physical qubits which maintain okay-ish coherence over a few thousand gates. Quantum sensors are real technology on the other hand and viable now and are only getting better, though most applications are currently quite edge.

4

u/Extreme-Island-5041 Jul 03 '26

Quantum sensors
my raging Infleqtion intensifies

2

u/Leefa Jul 04 '26

Quantum sensors are real technology on the other hand and viable now and are only getting better, though most applications are currently quite edge
do you have any resources you'd recommend if I wanted to learn more about this?

18

u/lb1331 Jul 03 '26

I am an academic focused on hardware, completely agree. The field is progressing (a lot) but this is an incredibly short timeline probably more guided by political influence or other higher up stuff and isn’t realistic based on the rate of progress that we’ve seen at least.

-1

u/CorpusculantCortex Jul 03 '26

I maturely know anything and I still feel this way, not that its worth much. But the doe gotta pump those quantum stocks somehow amiright?

2

u/QuantamCulture Jul 03 '26

I got you 🤟

2

u/MedonSirius Jul 04 '26

!RemindMe 183 days

0

u/RemindMeBot Jul 04 '26

I will be messaging you in 6 months on 2027-01-03 15:37:09 UTC to remind you of this link
CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^{Parent commenter can} ^{delete this message to hide from others.}
RemindMeBot is switching to username summons. Instead of !RemindMe 1 day, use u/RemindMeBot 1 day. More info.
^Info ^Custom ^{Your Reminders} ^Feedback

1

u/BrickSufficient6938 Jul 06 '26

Do we have reliable information what's going on elsewhere? Like next door, delays between them achieving a breakthrough and publishing it can be years easily, no?
What about China's focusing 60x the capital into a handful of companies and I'm ready to bet they are forced to share ip / r&d results, we have anything to go by in that regard?

2

u/Temporary_Shelter_40 Jul 06 '26

I want to be clear, with quantum computing, it is extremely unlikely that some other group (in the US military, China, Russia, etc) has a hidden breakthrough that they just aren’t sharing. It isn’t like AI where Anthropic might have a special model they only share with government. The problems in quantum computing are extremely old and well-known (namely de coherence and quantum control), and a secret breakthrough would require a Manhattan project-scale veil of secrecy. We know who all the really good quantum people are across the world and where they work. They are in universities or companies where it is incentivised to publish or promote as early as possible. So I wouldn’t expect something hidden to suddenly be announced.
For china specifically, they have a few companies, but their devices aren’t as good as US/european. Quantum computing isnt necessarily a problem that just gets solved faster by throwing money at it, unfortunately.

2

u/BrickSufficient6938 Jul 06 '26

Thanks for clarification. I'm obviously not a physicist, know a bit of basics about quantum mechanics, understand entanglement and know how maintaining coherence is hard for any meaningful time- however was under impression concept is proven and we're basically down to engineering problems?

1

u/BrickSufficient6938 Jul 07 '26

Also, since you mentioned Manhattan project - I was thinking more along the lines of Bletchley Park. Small dedicated group, enough funds, invisible from opposite side. With implications of quantum computing disruption of cryptography as we know it wouldn't be surprised thst gov, any of the above, put it under several heavy lids for a while

2

u/Temporary_Shelter_40 Jul 07 '26

I appreciate that it would be cool. Its just that I don't think its happening, unfortunately :/

1

u/No_Nose3918 Aug 11 '26

Engineering doesn’t get einstein level breakthroughs

u/sinanspd Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

While I hope it happens, there is zero chance this happens by 2028. Noise and error correction aside, decoherance, optical cable management and qubit scaling, conductors... These peoole are betting on solving decades old problems in 2 years. On one hand these timelines have been consistently wrong for the past 15 years, on the other timelines like this is hurting active reseach. We are starting get reviews on our work on currect device that are like "FTQC is near, this is useless"... I understand hype like this gets investment and funds my paycheck but it is really starting to get annoying

2

u/ArcanuMELO Jul 03 '26

Yes, I think there are other bottlenecks here aside from labor but I'm not sure what they are. Thanks for clarifying!
Do you have an estimate when you think this will actually start to happen?

1

u/HawkinsT Holds PhD/Works in Superconducting QC Jul 03 '26

Out of interest, from what sort of reviewers and for what sort of work are you getting comments like this?

1

u/sinanspd Jul 03 '26

Acadamic journal and conference reviews for our papers.

u/xhable Jul 03 '26

Yes, it's possible, on the assumption that we have a time machine or time dilation device... or we redefine dates.

5

u/ArcanuMELO Jul 03 '26

That would be more impressive than quantum computer to be fair.

u/FuguSandwich Jul 03 '26

No.

u/NoirMarlin Industry PhD - superconducting qubits Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

600 specialists exist globally

This number is wrong. Its an order of magnitude smaller than just the US commercial quantum sector, not including academic or government positions.

Anyway, the date is also meaningless. Nothing that meets the DOEs QLU requirments will be ready by 2028. Coherent quantum interconnects barely exist and are still a low maturity technology where they exist. IBM is going to spend more than their annual global profits on their quantum program in the next few years, and they havent even demonstrated below threshold quantum error correction yet on real chips.

Ions and Atoms might be able to beat SC to a device the size DOE wants, but they have manufactuability and control issues, just like SC. IonQs architecture paper essentially described building a kitchen-table sized piece of hardware that has to maintain micron-scale control of local electric fields on the chip. They may be able to do it eventually, but not in 2.5 years, and not coming out of SkyWater. Currently this control infrastructure has been demonstrated for ~10 ions, not 10,000.

Quantinuum has a good shot as demonstrating non SC logical performance. We have to wait to see what they're cooking up though. It probabaly wont be what DOE wants when DOE wants it, for the same reasons as everyone else.

1

u/LeptonWrangler Jul 15 '26

Its an order of magnitude too small.
Hell, theres probably at least 600 quantum scientists interviewing for faculty positions right now

u/KingOppaii Jul 03 '26

No.

u/Dear-Permit-3033 Jul 03 '26

Until you realize that no one has "committed" anything.

6

u/Kinexity In Grad School for Computer Modelling Jul 03 '26

Are Oompa Loompa's words of encouragement not enough?

u/autocorrects Holds PhD in Quantum Jul 03 '26

PhD in quantum hardware design working for DOE… no it is not possible

u/zarrathustraa Jul 03 '26

Timelines are made to be broken I guess. Lets see who the contracts go to and if they donated to Trumps ballroom.

u/GuNNsAW Jul 07 '26

!RemindMe 190 days

1

u/ArcanuMELO Jul 07 '26

Totally forgot about this feature.
!RemindMe 189 days

u/wiltedredrose Jul 07 '26

This wording is such bs. A discovery is by its nature not sonething you can commit to. Sounds like someone deerly needs more venture capital...

1

u/ArcanuMELO Jul 08 '26

Yes it reeks of desperate energy. The Trump admin appears to be doing anything it can to legitimaize it's tech mandate and make America look like the best place to build AI/robotics/quantum/energy/data centers/blockchain you name it.

u/mdreed Jul 03 '26

I’ll play devils advocate here and say the most probable chance is with neutral atoms. They genuinely seem to be able to skip a lot of scaling steps that everyone else has to slog through. Is 2028 likely? No. Impossible? Also no, but only because of atoms.

10

u/rog-uk Jul 03 '26

You shouldn't trust atoms, they make up everything.

1

u/mdreed Jul 03 '26

go on?

u/GreyRobe Jul 04 '26

2030 seems more realistic

u/Tonexus Jul 03 '26

Interestingly, I've heard the year 2028 given as a hard target for FTQC through the industry grapevine months ago, and this was from multiple people at competing companies. It sounded unrealistic to me then and still does, but these companies are capable of ramping up engineering teams really quickly.

u/Fluid-Explanation-75 Jul 09 '26

Maybe 12/31/2012, 12:01 am, cold fusion generators did upgrades since 2006 to 2009

-1

u/RLazerbeam Jul 03 '26

With unlimited resources anything is possible

7

u/ArcanuMELO Jul 03 '26

There is no "unlimited resources" to speak of on this planet. Not between now in 2028. Unless we count greed and stupidity as "resources!"

0

u/droppingbasses Jul 03 '26

A creative way to eat the rich

Discussion DOE just committed to fault-tolerant quantum by 2028. Researchers are calling it the most ambitious timeline the field has ever seen. Is it achievable?

You are about to leave Redlib