Three steps business leaders can take to get ‘quantum ready’

Before Alan Turing formulated his idea of “computing machines” in 1936, a computer was a person who performed calculations by writing numbers and symbols on paper.² For decades afterwards, digital computers improved only gradually. Now, your smartphone is millions of times more powerful than the computers that put humankind on the Moon.

At first glance, today’s fledgling quantum computers are following a similarly incremental path. However, quantum computing is a doubly exponential technology. According to ‘Neven’s Law,’ named after German scientist Hartmut Neven, its processing power is increasing exponentially faster than Moore’s Law.³ Within the time it takes a classical computer to double in power —approximately every 18 months — a quantum computer will quadruple in power. If this trend continues, there is no doubt that ‘suddenly’ will arrive far faster and much more disruptively for quantum computers than anyone expects.

For example, in 2019, Google claimed that its 53-qubit ‘Sycamore’ processor had performed a particularly complex calculation 158 million times faster than the world’s current most powerful classical computer — reducing the time required from 10,000 years to just four minutes.⁴ Just two years later, Boston start-up QuEra, announced a 256-qubit processor, a fivefold increase compared with Google’s machine.⁵

It is impossible to predict accurately just how quickly quantum computing will advance. But if current trends persist, we are likely to see pockets of disruption in as little as three years.

The hype around quantum computers emphasises their radical novelty and rapidly accelerating performance, but continued uncertainty around their capabilities makes it difficult to predict what organisations might be able to do and when. 

To deal with this ambiguity, organisations can monitor the broader societal, technological, economic, environmental, and political landscape for signals of progress and disruption. Technical developments and breakthroughs in quantum computing are often reported in the technical and trade press, and experiments carried out by competitors may be announced in corporate press releases. Analyst firms provide comprehensive views of the quantum landscape and ecosystem, and technology partners and suppliers can provide bulletins and training relating to their own capability. 

Through its research, EY has identified five disruptive signals that indicate quantum computing may be progressing faster than expected. These are:

1. Rapid improvements in the maturity of quantum computing architectures and technology platforms, between 2017 and 2021

2. Continued investment in, and scale of technology firms and academic programmes in the UK in the last two years

3. An exponential increase in the number of publicly announced use cases worldwide, between 2015 and 2022

4. A focus on growing the talent pipeline and improving training resources for quantum computing development

5. Clearer calls during 2020 and 2021 from policymakers and standards-makers for organisations to be aware of, and respond to, threats to current encryption methods.

The ‘quantum utility’ era 

During the next three years, it is highly probable that noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers will continue to dominate the field, providing opportunities for all organisations to build awareness and perform experiments. An example is IBM’s 127-qubit ‘Eagle’ processor, which, according to IBM, is its first quantum processor whose scale makes it impossible for a classical computer to reliably simulate.⁶

NISQ computers allow organisations to experiment with new algorithms and approaches to demonstrate solutions for complex but not insurmountable problems, such as optimisation, simulation and machine learning. However, NISQ systems typically have relatively modest numbers of qubits, and are still impacted by noise and decoherence, which can interrupt calculations before they complete.

In this era, although we may see some limited advantages for quantum computers, it is likely that classical computers will still be able to compete in key domains — albeit only the most powerful existing digital supercomputers.

The ‘quantum advantage’ era 

Within 5 to 10 years, it is possible that the performance of quantum computers will begin to stretch significantly ahead of classical computers. For example, more sophisticated chip architectures might extend the capabilities of qubits and enable greater algorithmic complexity. In this case, we may see quantum computers solving problems that would be impractical to run on classical computers or which would take an unreasonable amount of time. These may include simulating many-particle quantum systems to aid materials or drug discovery, or running Grover’s algorithm to significantly speed up unstructured searches. 

The ‘quantum supremacy’ era 

It is plausible that, within 10 to 20 years, when quantum computers are reliably noise-free or automatically error-correcting, they will have sufficient qubits, and both hardware and software sophistication to run algorithms or simulations that would be impossible to execute on classical computers. It is in this transformational level that truly disruptive impacts may occur. 

With so much hype surrounding quantum technologies, it can be tempting to adopt a wait-and-see approach. However, astute leaders will recognise that if disruption has the potential to be sudden and overwhelming, they really have only one option: they need a plan. 

For example, if competitors use quantum computers to discover, design and build products and services orders of magnitude faster, better, and cheaper than you, the disruption will be total. On the flip side, having a plan allows you to adapt to and shape the future. Good strategy blends futures-thinking with experiments and pilots. It allows leaders to assess and modify investment choices continuously as the technology progresses, and helps you remain competitive, whichever future is realised.