Vice-president of IBM Quantum Jay Gambetta talks to Philip Ball about the company’s many quantum advances over the last 20 years, as well as its recently announced five-year roadmap to “quantum advantage”.
On September 15, Jay Gambetta published a blog post on "IBM's Roadmap for scaling quantum technology" [1].Gambetta is an IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Quantum.In contrast to roadmaps, example, for semiconductor development, this roadmap is limited to a perspective for the next four years.Nevertheless, the presented steps toward the commercialization of IBM's quantum computers are ambitious.Gambetta compares the development of quantum computers with the effort of the moon landing in 1969.Given the multibillion funding initiatives which are currently exercised in various countries he might be right.It took huge amounts of money to take a few men to the moon and to bring them back safely.Similarly, it may take large investments in research and development to get to, as Gambetta says, "the million-plus qubit devices of the future".IBM is one of the few large nonegovernmental players (such as Google) who embark on such a development.