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​With fault tolerance the ultimate goal, error mitigation is the path that gets quantum computing to usefulness



The history of classical computing is one of advances in transistor and chip technology yielding corresponding gains in information processing performance. Although quantum computers have seen tremendous improvements in their scale, quality and speed in recent years, such a gradual evolution seems to be missing from the narrative. Indeed, it is widely accepted that one must first build a large fault-tolerant quantum processor before any of the quantum algorithms with proven super-polynomial speed-up can be implemented. Building such a processor therefore is the central goal for our development.


Communiqué de IBM
July 21st 2022 | 385 readers

However, recent advances in techniques we refer to broadly as quantum error mitigation allow us to lay out a smoother path towards this goal. Along this path, advances in qubit coherence, gate fidelities, and speed immediately translate to measurable advantage in computation, akin to the steady progress historically observed with classical computers.

At IBM Quantum, we plan to continue developing our hardware and software with this path in mind. As we improve the scale, quality, and speed of our systems, we expect to see decreases in γ̄ and β resulting in improvements in quantum runtime for circuits of interest.

At the same time, together with our partners and the growing quantum community, we will continue expanding the list of problems that we can map to quantum circuits and develop better ways of comparing quantum circuit approaches to traditional classical methods to determine if a problem can demonstrate quantum advantage. We fully expect that this continuous path that we have outlined will bring us practical quantum computing.

More to read: https://research.ibm.com/blog/gammabar-for-quantum-advantage

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