Clearing significant hurdle to quantum computing - Harvard Gazette

"Now process this: Harvard scientists just unveiled a system that was 10 times bigger and the first quantum machine able to operate continuously without restarting. In a paper published in the journal Nature, the team demonstrated a system of more than 3,000 quantum bits (or qubits) that could run for more than two hours, surmounting a series of technical challenges and representing a significant step toward building the super computers, which could revolutionize science, medicine, finance, and other fields."

"Conventional computers encode information - from a video on your phone to the words and images on this page - in bits with a binary code. Quantum computers use subatomic particles in individual atoms and take advantage of counterintuitive properties of quantum physics to achieve far more processing power. Binary conventional bits store information as zeros or ones. Qubits can be zero, one, or both at the same t"

A system of more than 3,000 qubits operated continuously for over two hours, overcoming technical challenges that previously required frequent restarts. Continuous operation demonstrates stability and control advances that support scaling to much larger qubit counts. The project involved researchers from Harvard and MIT and collaboration with QuEra Computing. Continuous, long-duration operation enables longer computations without interruption and reduces overhead from repeated initialization. The achievement represents a major step toward building large-scale quantum machines with potential transformative impacts across science, medicine, finance, and other computationally intensive fields.

Read at Harvard Gazette