Hi, I've been busy lately and have been appearing in various media. I feel like someone else would be better, but I'll do my best.
Now, as I commented in the Nikkei newspaper about the quantum computer race between the U.S. and China, a new wave of trends is coming and it is starting to be organized. There are still many things to be decided as we are still in the transitional phase, but I would like to check some of them out.
Trapped Ion
In hardware, trapped ion are completely the focus of attention. IonQ in the U.S. is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Honeywell is planning to merge with CQC in the U.K. and go public as a startup. The strength of Trapped Ion is its accuracy, the small number of qubits required for error correction, and the rapid miniaturization of its products. Recently, AQT in Europe announced a 19-inch server rack-type small quantum computer, a 24-qubit fully coupled machine. Thus, IonQ, Honeywell, and AQT are making great strides.
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/s73
And recently, silicon type is also starting to get attention. TSMC and Intel are working on this, and I have also heard a lot about Global Foundries recently.
There is also an optical quantum computer, but it needs to be developed at the same time as the software, and it is a bit smaller in scale, so it has been a hot topic in the community recently. The overall momentum is a bit lacking, so we need to be creative.
Software is moving to FTQC
As for software, NISQ (small-scale quantum computer with errors) has been difficult, and overall, it is moving toward FTQC (quantum computer with error correction). Quantum chemistry calculations are moving from VQEto QPE (quantum phase estimation). Financial calculations were originally designed for FTQC, but they have been modified to work on recent machines, and QAE (quantum amplitude estimation) is now a hot topic. Optimization calculations are as tough as ever, but instead, machine learning is gaining momentum. In the future, hardware companies are announcing that they will manufacture hardware for FTQC, so inevitably, software is also shifting toward FTQC in the medium to long term. However, there is still a lot of software for NISQ, so it is a transitional period and the transition is gradually underway.
Players
The trend of players around the world is from the first generation of quantum annealing, the second generation of quantum gate NISQ, to the latest third generation of quantum gate FTQC, with rapid technological development, replacement of systems and development, rapid changes in technology, and rapid changes in application fields. It is becoming increasingly difficult to survive, and companies are withdrawing and entering the market one after another.
Only a few companies in the world have yet to switch to the latest quantum gates for FTQC, so it will be a year or so before companies are tested on their ability to migrate from NISQ to FTQC. Still, the transition seems to be going faster than expected, so let's do our best to keep up with the trend. That's all.