36C3 - Quantum Computing: Are we there yet?

36C3 Preroll music

Herald: So hello and welcome to a quantum
computing talk by the Andreas [Dewes], who

gave a talk exactly five years ago and
it's almost exactly five years ago, it's

like one year and two or three hours. And
then he gave a talk at 31C3 about quantum

computing titled "Let's Build a Quantum
Computer". And I think back then we

basically had just found out that Google
was planning to partner with the

University of California at Santa Barbara
to try to build a quantum computer. Of

course, now we're five years later, we've
had a lot of developments, I think, in the

field. We've had some big announcements by
Google and other groups. And Andreas has

now come back to give us an update. So
please welcome him to the stage.

Applause

Andreas: Okay. Hi, everyone, so I'm very
happy to be here again. After five years

of giving the first version of this talk.
My motivation for given this talk is quite

simple. I was often so I did my PHD on
exponential quantum computing from 2009 to

2012. I left that field afterwards to work
in industry, but always people would come

to me and ask, hey, Andreas, did you see
like this new experiment. Did you see, you

can like use quantum computers on Amazon's
cloud now? Did you see, like Google has

this new quantum thing? This is really
working? Can we use quantum computers yet?

Why are you not working on this? And I
couldn't I couldn't really answer the

question. So I said, OK, I want to go back
to this and find out what happened in the

last five years since I finished my PhD.
What kind of progress was made in the

field? And do we actually have quantum
computers today that are working already

or are we not yet quite just there? So we
want to do it like this. I want to first

give you a short introduction to quantum
computing. So just that we have a common

understanding of how that works and why
it's interesting. Then I will show you a

small example of experimental quantum
speed up. Notably the work I did with my

colleagues in Saclay during my PhD
thesis. Then we discuss some of the

challenges and problems, why we were not
able to build a real quantum computer back

then. And I will discuss some approaches
that have come up since then. That would

basically allow us to do that eventually.
And then we'll, of course, discuss

Google's recent experiment in
collaboration with the University of Santa

Barbara, where they showed basically a
very impressive quantum computing system

with 53 Qubits. We will look exactly to
try to understand what they did there and

see if that's really like a quantum
computer in the in the real sense already

or if there's still something missing. And
in the end, of course, I will try to give

you another small outlook to see what we
can expect in the coming years. So in

order to talk about quantum computing, we
need to first talk about classical

computing just a little bit. You might
know that classical computers, they work

with bits, so zeros and ones. They store
them in so-called registers. This here for

example of like a bit register. Of course,
the bits themselves are not very

interesting. But we have to do stuff with
them so we can compute functions over

those bit registers. That's what like
modern CPU is doing in a simplified way,

of course. So we take some input, but
register values, we compute some function

over then and then we get an output value.
So a very simple example would be a search

problem. I would discuss this because
later we will also see in the experiment

how we can use a quantum computer to solve
this. So I just want to motivate why this

kind of problem can be interesting. And
it's a very silly search function. So it

takes two bits as inputs and it returns
one bit as an output, indicating, whether

the input bits are the solution to our
search problem or not. And you could

imagine that we have a very, very
complicated function here. So, for

example, a function that calculates the
answer to life, the universe and

everything, while not a complete answer,
but only the first two bits. So really

complicated to implement and very costly
to execute. So we might think that it

might take like millions of years to run
this function once on our inputs. And so

we want to find the right solution to that
function with as few function calls as

possible, of course. Overall, there are
four possibilities, so for input states, 00

01 10 and 11 that we can apply our
function to and only for one of these

states. The 01 state, because the answer
is 42. So that's 0 times 1 plus to plan 2

plus some other stuff. So the first two
bits are 0 1 for this for a value, the

function returns a 1 for all of the other
values, the function returns 0. Now let's

think about how we can implement a central
search function and in principle, if we

don't know anything about the function. So
we can imagine it's so complicated that we

can't do any optimizations. We don't know
where to look. So we have to really try

each of these values in sequence. And for
this we can have a simple algorithm so we

can start initializing out our a bit
register with 00 value. Then we can call

the function on that register. We can see
what the result is. In this case, the

result would be zero. If the result would
be 1, then we know, okay, we have found

our solution so we can stop our algorithm.
But in this case, the result is zero. So

we can just go back to the left value and
to the left step and increase the register

value, go to 0 1 and try again. And in the
worst case, depending if you're optimistic

or not, we have to do this three or four
times. So if you want to really be sure

that we find the right answers, we have to
do it four times in the worst case. And

this is sort of say the time complexity or
the computational complexity of the

search. You know, if you imagine that in
our algorithm, the most expensive

operation is really calling this function
F, then the calling time of the complexity

of calling this function will be what
dominates the complexity of our algorithm.

And in this case, the complexity is very
similar, simple here because it's linear

in the number of the search space. So if
you have n states, for example, in our

examples, we have four different input
spaced states. We also need to evaluate

the function four times. So and please
keep this graph in mind because we're

gonna revisit that later a bit to see,if
we can do better with a different paradigm

of computing. And so classically. This is
really the best we can do for the search

problem here because we don't know
anything else about the function that

would allow us to optimize that further.
But now the interesting thing is that we

might imagine that we don't use classical
computing for solving our problem. And in

fact, the discipline that we call quantum
computing was kind of like inspired by

lecturer or like a seminar of Richard
Feynman, who thought about, how it would be

possible to similar and or if it would be
possible to simulate quantum systems on a

classical computer. A Turing machine, if
you want. And he found that because

quantum mechanics is so complicated for
classical computers that it is not

possible to do that efficiently, but that
if you would use the laws of quantum

mechanics themselves to make a computer
like quantum computer, then it would be

possible to simulate this quantum systems
and just kind of like sparked this whole

idea of using quantum mechanics to do
computation. And in the following years,

they were not only as solutions found for
simulating quantum systems, which such a

quantum computer, but also for solving
other not related problems to quantum

computing. So like search problems or
factorization problems, for example. And

quantum computers can do, can do
computation faster than classical

computers, because they have several
differences in how they work. So one of

the key differences here is superposition,
which means that if you use a quantum

computer, instead of a classical computer,
we cannot only load a single register

value into our bit register. So for
example, the first value of only zeros.

But instead we can kind of load all of the
possible state values and it at once or in

parallel. And this so-called quantum state
or quantum superposition state where each

of these values here has an amplitude
which is shown on the left, that is

basically a complex number that relates
them to the other Qubit, to other states

and ups. If you have like for example,
n-Qubits, then the total number of Qubits

states can be very large 2 to the
power of N. So we can imagine that if you

have a large Qubit quantum quantum bit
register, then your number of quantum

states can be really, really large and
this can be very powerful for computation.

So in the rest of the talk, we gonna just
indicate this by like showing the register

as like a small rectangle to indicate that
it's not only a single value in there, but

that we have a superposition values of all
the possible input values to our function,

for example. And there is a condition and
so called normalization condition that

puts some constraints on these amplitude.
Because the sum of the squares of the

absolute values of these amplitude needs
to sum to one, which basically means that

the entire the probability of each of
these of all of these states together

needs to be 100 percent. So. And this is
the first ingredient that makes quantum

computers interesting for computation
because we can basically implement any

classical function that we can also run on
a classical computer, on a quantum

computer. The difference is that we cannot
only run it for one value at a time, but

we can call it can run it down on a
superposition of all possible input

values. So if you want, you have like this
massive paralellyzation where you run you

off computation on all possible inputs at
once and also calculate and all of the

possible output values. And that sounds,
of course, very cool and very useful.

There's a catch that we will discuss
later. So it's not as easy as that. But

this is one step off like the power that
makes quantum computing interesting. The

next thing that is different is that we
can on a quantum computer, not only run

classical gates or classical functions,
but we can also run so-called quantum

gates. And the quantum gates, they're
different in respect to the classical

functions because they cannot only like
classical operations like and or or on

like two Qubits in a predictable way. But
they can kind of like act on the whole

Qubit state at once and also create so-
called entangled states which are really

weird quantum states where we can't really
separate the state of one Qubit from the

state of or other Qubits. So it's kind of
like if we want to try to make a small

change to one of two Qubits in our
system, we also changing other Qubits

there. So we can never like separate the
bits, the Qubits out like we can with a

classical computer. And this is another
resource that we can use in quantum

computing to solve certain problems faster
than we could with a classical computer.

Now, the catch, as I said, is that we, of
course, do not, we do not want to only

make computation with our Qubits, Qubits
register, but we also want to read out the

result of our computation. And if we try
that. So we make like computation. And

when we want to measure the state of our
quantum register, we have a small problem

because, well, the measurement process is
actually quite complicated. But in a very

simplified way, you can just imagine, that
God is trying some dice here. And then if

we have a quantum vector, a quantum state
vector that has like this amplitude on the

left. So a one to a n. And then we will
pick. He or she would pick a state

randomly from the possible states. And the
probability of getting a given state as a

result is proportional, as is that before
to the square of the absolute value of the

amplitude. So that means we can perform
computation on all of the possible input

states of our function. But when we read
out the result, we will only get one of

the possible results. So it's kind of like
destroys at the first glimpse the utility

of quantum computing because we can do
like computation on all states in

parallel, but we cannot read out the
result. So not a very interesting computer

because we can't learn about the output.
So to say or not easily at least. But it

turns out that there's actually a way of
still using quantum computing to be faster

than a classical computer. And the first
kind of practical algorithm for a search

problem, notably the search problem that
we discussed before, was given by Love

Grover, who was a researcher at the Bell
Labs, and who found the Grover algorithm

that is named after him. That's basically
a search algorithm which can prove it can,

as we will see, solved the search problem
that we have in a much more efficient way

than any classical computer could. And in
my opinion, it's still one of the most

beautiful quantum algorithms because it's
very simple and it's very powerful and

does also prove, unlike for other
algorithms like the factorization

algorithms from Shor that the Grover
algorithm can be will be faster always

than any classical computer classical
algorithm. So in my opinion, it's a very

nice example of really a quantum algorithm
that is more powerful than a classical

one. Let's see how it works. So they're
three steps again and the algorithm. First

we initialize our Qubit register, our
state vector to a superposition of the

four possible output values, so 00 01
10 and 10, again, all with equal

probability in this case, zero amplitude.
Then we evaluate the function on this

input state here and what the function
then does. So we made some special

encoding here that basically marks the
solution of our problem by changing the

sign of the amplitude of the corresponding
state. We can see that in the output state

here, the 01 state has a sign which is
negative, which means that it's the

solution of the problem that we search.
Still, if we were to the read out now

directly, we wouldn't be able to learn
anything about the solution, because as

you can see, the amplitude is still equal
for all of the four states. So if you

would make a read out now, we would only
get like one of the four possible states

at random so we wouldn't learn anything
with a hundred percent probability about

the solution of our problem. In order to
do that, we need to apply another step to

so-called Grover or Diffusion, diffusion
operator, which now takes this phase

difference or the sign difference between
these individual quantum states and

applies a quantum operator to that, that
basically transfers the amplitude from all

of the states that are not a solution to a
problem to the states that is the

solution. And for on this case, with two
Qubits here and with four possible values,

there's only one step we need. And after
executing that, you can see that now the

amplitude of our solution state is one
versus very. But the amplitude of the

other states is all zero. So that's great,
because now we can just do a Qubit

measurement and then we will have a
hundred percent probability find a

solution to our search problem. And that's
where kind of like the magic of quantum

mechanics shows, because you can evaluate
its function only once. So remember that

in the first step we only call the search
function once of all of the values in

parallel. So from the computational
complexity, we are much lower than the

classical algorithm, but still we are able
to find 100 percent position in this case

to see which state is the solution to our
search problem. So and that's working not

only for the case of two Qubits, but also
with larger Qubit registers. So for

example, if you would take 10 Qubits, you
would need to execute a few more of these

steps, two and three. So instead of one
iteration, you would need 25 iterations,

for example, here, which is still much
better than the 1024 iterations that you

would need if you would really look into
every possible solution of the function in

the classical algorithm. So the speed up
here is very good for, so to say, all of

the like. It's quadratical for the
solution space. And if you like, look at

the complexity plot again, we can now
compare our classical algorithm with the

quantum algorithm on the Grover search.
And as you can see, the time complexity

or the number of variations of F that we
need is only a square root of N, where N

is the size of the search space,
which shows that that we have really a

speed advantage hier of the quantum
computer versus the classical computer.

And nice thing is the larger our search
space becomes, the more dramatic our speed

up will be, because for example, for a
search space with one million

elements. We will only have to evaluate
the search function 1000 times instead of

one million times. So that's quite so to
say a speed up in that sense. Now, how can

we build a system that realizes this
quantum algorithm? Here, I show on the

quantum processor that I built with my
colleagues at the Saclay during my PhD. So

if you want more information about this,
you should check out my last talk. I just

want to go briefly over the different
aspects here. So we use a so called

superconducting Qubits, transmit Qubits
for realizing our quantum computer. A

quantum processor. You can see the chip
here on the top. It's about one centimeter

across. You can see the two Qubits in the
middle. The other, like snake like

structures are coupling a wave guides
where we can manipulate the Qubits using

microwaves. So we use frequencies that are
similar to the ones that are used by

mobile phones to manipulate and read out
our Qubits. And if you look in the

middle, you can see the red area, which
contains the Qubit, each Qubit itself. And

then there's another zoom in here, which
contains the actual qubit structure, which

is just some two layers of aluminum that
have been placed on top of each other and

which create, when they are cooled, to a
very low temperature, a so-called

superconducting state, where we can use
the superconducting face between these two

values, layers to indicate to to realize
our Qubits. There's also coupler in the

middle. So this green element that you
see, which allows us to run quantum gate

operations between the two Qubits. To use
that in practice, we need to put this in a

delusion crisis that which is really like
just a very fancy refrigerator, you could

say, you cool it down to about 10 milli K.
So very low temperature just above the

absolute zero temperature. You can see the
sample holder here on the left side with

the chip mounted to it. So this whole
thing is put in the delusion fridge and

it's cool down to the temperature. And
then we can, as I said, manipulated by

using his microwave transmission lines.
And what we did is we implemented the

Grover search for the two Qubits. So we
ran this algorithm that I discussed

before. I don't want to go to too much
into the details. The results are obtained

by running this algorithm many times. And
as you can see, we have achieved not a

hundred percent success probability, but
over 50 percent for the most cases, which

is like, yeah, not perfect, of course, but
it's good enough to, in our case, show

that there was really a quantum speedup
possible. And if you ask why, okay, why is

not 100 percent probability possible or
why can't we build larger systems with

data, what kept us from, for example,
building a 100 or 1000 qubit quantum

processor? Well, there's several things on
this, of course, that we have like we make

errors when we manipulate the Qubits. So
the microwave signals are not perfect, for

example. So we introduce small errors when
like making two Qubit and single Qubit

interactions. We also need a really high
degree of connectivity if we want to build

a large scale quantum computer. So if
every Qubit is connected to every other

Qubit, for example, that would make one
million connections for 1000 Qubit code

processors, which processor which is just
on the engineering side, very hard to

realize. And then also our Qubits has
errors because they can the environment

that the Qubits are in, like the chip and
the vicinity there also introduces noise

that will destroy our quantum state and
that limits how many operations we can

perform on a single Qubit. So is possible
solution, which is the surface code

architecture which was introduced in 2009
already actually by David DiVincenzo from

the Jülich Research Center. And the idea
here is that we do not have a quantum

process of a full connectivity. So we do
not connect every Qubit to every other

Qubit. Instead, we only connect a Qubit to
its four neighbors via so-called tunable

coupler. And this is, of course, much
easier because you don't need so many

connections on a chip. But it turns out
that you can still run most of the quantum

algorithms that you could also run with a
fully connected processor. You just have

to pay like a penalty for the limited
connectivity. And the nice thing is also

that you can encode a single logical
Qubit. So Qubit that we want to do

calculations with as for example, five
physical Qubits. And so all of these

Qubits here that are on the chip would
together form one logical Qubit, which

would then allow us to do error
corrections so we can, if there had been

some error of one of the Qubits, for
example, of relaxation or a defacing

error, then we can use the other Qubits
that we prepared in exactly the same of

same way to correct this error and
continue doing the calculations. And this

is quite important because in these
superconducting Qubit systems, there are

always error present errors present, and
we will not probably be able to eliminate

all of them. So we need to find a way to
correct the errors, while we perform the

computation. Now the Google processor
follows the surface code approach, here I

show you an image from the Nature article
which was released, I think, one months

ago. So it's a very impressive system, I
find, it contains 50 trees superconducting

Qubits, 86 couplers, tunable couplers
between those Qubits and they achieve

fidelity. So the success probability, if
you like, for performing one and two Qubit

gates, which is higher than 99 percent. So
this is already pretty, very, very good.

And almost enough fidelity to realize
quantum error correction as I discussed

before. And with the system, you can
really run quite complex quantum

algorithms, much more complex than the
ones that we run in 2012. So the paper,

for example, they run sequences with 10 to
20 individual quantum operations or

Quantum Gates. And just to give you an
impression of the crisis study, a

cryogenic engineering and microwave
engineering here, this is so to say, the

delusion crisis that where the Qubit ship
is mounted and you can see that it's quite

a bit more complex than the system we had
in 2012. So it really looks way more like

a professional quantum computer, I would
say. If you ask a physicist now, why would

you build such a system? The answer would
be, of course. Well, it's awesome. So why

not? But it turns out that if an
organization like Google gives like 100 or

200 million US dollars for realizing such
research, they also want to see some

results. So that's why the team, of
course, under John Martinez tried to use

this quantum process for something, that
shows how powerful or dead, so to say, can

outperform a classical computer. And this
sounds easy, but actually it's not so not

so easy to find a problem that is both
doable on this quantum computer, which has

like 50 Qubits and a bit more than 50
Qubits and like 80 couplers. But it's not

possible to simulate on a classical
computer. So we could think, for example,

about the factoring of numbers into prime
components, which is, of course, always

like the motivation of certain agencies to
push for quantum computing, because that

would allow them to read everyone's email.
But unfortunately, in both, the number of

Qubits that he would require for this and
the number of operations is much too high

to be able to realize something like this
on this processor. The next thing, which

would be very interesting is the
simulation of quantum systems. So if you

have like molecules or other quantum
systems that have many degrees of freedom,

it's very difficult to simulate those on
classical computers. On a quantum computer

you could do it efficiently. But again,
since the Google team did not do this, I

assume the quantum computer was just or
they didn't have like a feasible problem

where they could actually perform such a
simulation that would not be not be

performing well or like calculable on a
classical computer. So but in the near-

term, in the future, this might actually
be very relevant application of such a

processor. The last possibility would be
to run, for example, the search algorithm

that we discussed before. But again, for
the number of Qubits that are in the

system and the size of the search space,
it's still not possible because the

algorithm requires too many steps. And the
limited coherence times of Qubits in this

processor make it impossible to to
run this kind of like algorithm there, at

least to my knowledge. So what what they
did then, was therefore to perform a

different kind of experiment, one that was
doable with the processor, which is so-

called randomized benchmarking. And in
this case, what you do is that you instead

of like running an algorithm that does
something actually useful, like a search

algorithm, you run just a random sequence
of gates. So you have, for example, your

53 Qubits and then you run first like some
single Qubit gates. So you changed the

Qubit values individually. Then you run
two Qubit gates between random Qubits to

create like a superposition and an
entangled state. And in the end, it just

read out the resulting qubit state from
your register. And this is also very

complex operation. So you really need a
very high degree of like control of your

quantum processor, which the Martinez is,
the Google team was able to achieve here.

It's not it's just not solving a really
practical problem yet, so to say. But on

the other hand, it's the it's it's the
system. It's an algorithm that can be run

on the quantum computer easily, but which
is, as we will see, very difficult to

simulate or reproduce on a classical
system. And the reason that it's so

difficult to reproduce on a classical
system is that, if you want to simulate

the action of these quantum gates that we
run on the quantum computer using a

classical machine, a classical computer,
then for every Qubit that we add, roughly

the size of our problem, space quadruples.
So you can imagine if you have like two

Qubits, then it's very easy to simulate
that you can do it on like your iPhone or

like your computer, for example. If you
add more and more Qubits store, you can

see that the problem size becomes really
really big really fast. So if you have

like 20 Qubits, 30 Qubits, for example,
you cannot do it on a personal computer

anymore. You will need like supercomputer.
And then if you keep increasing the number

of Qubits, then at some point in this
case, 50 Qubits or 53 Qubits, it would be

impossible even for the fastest
supercomputers that we have right now. And

that's what is called the so-called
quantum supremacy regime here for this

randomized gate sequences, which is
basically just the area here on the curve.

That is C, that is still doable for this
quantum processor that Google realized.

But it's not simulatorable or verifiable
by any classical computer, even like a

supercomputer in a reasonable amount of
time. And if we can run something in this

regime here, it proves that we have a
quantum system that is able to do

computation, which is not classically
reproducible. So it's something that

really can only be done on a quantum
computer. And that's why running this kind

of experiment is is interesting, because
it really shows us that quantum computers

can do things that classical computers
cannot do, even if there are for the

moment not really useful. And the gate
sequence that they run looks something

like this. We can see again, like here
five, four of the Qubits that the Google

team has. And they run sequences of
operations of different lengths, then

perform a measurement and then just sample
the output of their measurements. So what

they get as a result is a sequence of long
bit strings, so zeros and ones. For each

experiment, they run and to reproduce the,
to check that a quantum computer is

actually doing the right thing, you have
to compare it to the results of a

classical simulation of this algorithm.
And that's, of course, a problem now,

because, we just said that we realized the
quantum computer, a quantum processor,

which is able to do this computation on 53
Qubits and that no classical computer can

verify that. So the question is now, how
can they prove or show that what the

quantum computer calculates is actually
the correct answer or that he does not

just produce some garbage values? And
that's a very interesting question,

actually. And the way they did it here is
by extrapolation. So instead of, for

example, solving the full circuits, so
that contains all of the connections and

all of the gates of the full algorithm,
they created simplified circuits in two

different ways. So, for example, they cut
they cut some of the connections between

the Qubits and the algorithms, so that the
problem space would become a bit smaller

or in the other case, with the allied
circuit, they just changed the operations

in order to allow for some shortcuts in
the classical computation of the classical

simulation of the algorithm. So in both
cases, they were able to then verify the

result of the quantum computation with this
classical simulation performed on a

supercomputer. And then they basically
just did this for a larger and larger

number of Qubits. They plotted the
resulting curve and they extrapolated that

to the supremacy regime to see that. OK.
Based on the error models that they

developed, based on the simulation, they
can with a certain confidence, of course,

say that probably the quantum computer is
doing the right thing even in the

supremacy regime, even though we can't
they cannot verify it using the classical

simulations. And in case the quantum
computer did wrong still, they have also

archive to the results. And maybe ten
years when we have better supercomputers,

we might be able to just go back to them
and then verify them against the 53, 53

Qubits processor here, by which time, of
course, they might already have like a

larger quantum processor again. So the key
results of this, I would say, are that for

the first time they show that really
quantum computer can beat a classical

computer, even though it is at a very
artificial and probably not very useful

problem. And what the experiment also
shows is that really, I would say an

astounding level of control of such a
large scale on medium size quantum

processor, because even five years ago,
six years ago, 2012, 2013, the systems

that we worked with mostly consisted of
three or four Qubits and we could barely

fabricate the chips and manipulate them to
get like algorithms running. And now if I

see like a 50 tree Qubit processor with
such a high degree of control and fidelity

there, I can really say that is really an
amazing progress in the last five years

that what was achieved, especially by the
Google Martinez team here. And I think it

is a very good wild milestone on the way
to fully work on quantum computer because

it nicely shows the limitations of the
current system and gives a good direction

on new areas of research, for example, an
error correction, where we can improve the

different aspects of the quantum
processor. The research has also been

criticized from various sides, so I just
want to iterate a few of the points

here. One of the criticisms is, of course,
that it doesn't do anything useful. So

there's really no applicability of this
experiment and why that's true. It's, of

course, very difficult to go from like a
basic, very simple quantum process of two

Qubits to a system that can really
factorize prime numbers or do anything

useful. So we will always need to find
problems that are both hard enough so that

we can solve them in a reasonable
timeframe. A couple of years, for example,

that still proved the progress that we
make on the road to quantum computing. So

in this sense, while quantum supremacy
does not really show anything useful in

terms of computation that is done. I think
it is still a very good problem as a

benchmark for any kind of quantum
processor, because it requires that you

have very good control over your system
and that you can run such a number of

gates at a very high fidelity, which is
really currently, I would say, the state

of the art. The research also took, took
some shortcuts. For example, they used

like a two Qubits, quantum gates, which
are not, as we call them, canonical

gates, which might be problematic
because if you want to run a quantum

algorithm on the system, you need
to implement certain quantum gates that

you need for that. And since they only
have like non canonical gates here, which

are still universal, by the way, they
could not do that directly, but with some

modification of the system, that should
also be possible. And the last criticism

might be that, okay, here you have a
problem that was engineered to match a

solution, which is of course that, okay,
we need some solution, as I said, some

problem that we can't realistically solve
on a such a system. I think, though, also

like the other points, if you want to
build a large scale quantum processor, you

need to define reasonable milestones and
having such a benchmark that other groups,

for example, can also run that process
against is a very good thing because it

makes the progress visible and also makes
it easy to compare how different groups

or are companies or organizations
are are at competing on the

number of Qubits under control they have
about them. So, if you want to make a more

kind of Moore's Law for quantum computing,
there would be several possibilities that

you could do. Here I show you, for
example, the number of Qubits that have

been realized for superconducting systems
over the years. This is, of course

incomplete because it could like the
number of Qubits alone doesn't tell you

much about your system. I mean, we could
do a Qubit chip of 1000 or 10000 Qubits

today. But if you don't have the
connectivity and don't have to controllability

of individual Qubits, then this
chip wouldn't be good. So there are other

things, that we also need to take into
account here. As I said, just as like the

coupling between individual Qubits and the
coherence time and the fidelity of the

Qubit operations. So this is really just
one one very small aspect of this whole

whole problem space. But I think it shows
nicely that in the last years there was

really tremendous progress in terms of the
power of the superconducting systems,

because the original Qubit, which was
developed in at NYC in Japan by

Professor Nakamura, was done in like
around 2000. So that very, very bad

coherence time, very bad properties. But
still it showed for the first time that he

could coherently control such a system.
And then it didn't take long for other

groups, for example, to Quantronics
Group and so Saclay, to pick up on this

work and to do to keep improving it. So
after a few years, we already had Qubits

of a few hundred or even a microsecond of
coherence time, which was like in like

three or orders of magnitude better than
what we had before. And there were other

advances then made by groups in the US,
for example, in Yale, the ShowCoupLab,

which developed new Qubit architectures
that allowed us to couple the Qubits more

efficiently with each other and to again
have better control of them manipulating

them. And then there's also groups like
the research group at IBM or companies

like WeGetty that took again these
ideas and that added engineering and their

own research on top of that in order to
make the systems even better. So in 2018,

we already had systems with 17 or 18
Qubits in them. And now with this Google

and UC Santa Barbara work, we have the
first systems with more than 50 Qubits

after not even 20 years, which I think is
quite some progress in this area. And of

course, if you ask me how close we are to
and actually working quantum computer,

it's still very difficult to say, I find,
because we've proven the group prove the

quantum supremacy for its randomized
algorithm. But in order to do something

applicable or useful with such a quantum
system, I think we need like at least

again, 50 maybe 200 additional Qubits and
a larger number of Qubit operations. But

it's really hard to say. That's why I also
say don't believe in this chart because

there's also, of course, a lot of work in
the theory of quantum algorithms, because

up to now we are still discovering new
approaches of doing quantum simulations

for examples. And right now, there are a
lot of research groups that are looking

for ways to make these medium scale
quantum computers. So quantum computers

with 50 or 100 Qubits already useful for
using quantum simulations. So it's really

an interplay between what the theory can
give us in terms of quantum algorithm and

what in terms of experimental realization
we can build as a quantum processor. So in

my opinion, quantum simulation will
definitely be something that where we will

see the first applications in the next. I
would say three to five years. Other

things, optimizations. I have to admit I
am less an expert and I think they're a

bit more complex. So we will probably see
the first applications in those areas a

bit later. And the big motivation for like
the three letter agencies always is,

of course, the factoring out the breaking
of cryptosystems, which is the most

challenging one, though, because in order
to do that, you would both need very large

numbers of Qubits. So at least 8000
Qubits for an 8000 bits RSA key, for

example. And you would also need a very
large amount of Qubit operations because

you need to run the sure operation. And
that involves a lot of steps for the

quantum processor. And so to say the most,
I would say from my perspective

unrealistic application of superconducting
quantum processes in the next year. But I

think, if somebody would build a quantum
computer, maybe we would also not just

know about it. So who knows? So to
summarize, quantum computers, quantum

processors are getting really, seriously
complex and very impressive. So we have

seen tremendous progress in the last five
years. I still think that we are like five

years away from building really practical
quantum computers and there are still some

challenges. For example, an error
correction in the Quantum Gatefidelity and

indeed, again, general architecture of
these systems that we need to overcome.

And they might also be some challenges
which we haven't even identified yet with

which we might only encounter at a later
stage when trying to build really large

scale quantum processors. And as a last
point, I just want to stress again, that

quantum computing research is not only
done by Google or by IBM, there a lot

of groups in the world involved in this
kind of research, both in theory and an

experiment. And as I said before, a lot of
the breakthroughs that we use today for

building quantum processes were done in
very different places like Japan, Europe,

USA. So it's really, I would say, a global
effort. And you should also, when you

look, when you see this marketing PR that
companies like Google and IBM do, maybe

not believe all of the hype they're
creating and keep on down to earth views,

so to say, of the limits and the potential
of quantum computing. So that's it. And I

would be happy to take on your questions
now. And if you have any

feedback, there's also my Twitter handle
and my email address. And I think we also

have some time for questions here right
now. Thank you.

Applause

Herald: Thank you, Andreas. We have almost
20 minutes for Q and A. If you're leaving

now, please do so very quietly and if you
can avoid it, just don't do it. Thank you.

Okay. Q and A. You know the game. There's
eight microphones in this room, so just

queue behind them and we will do our best
to get everyone sorted out sequentially.

We will start with a question
from the Internet.

Signal-Angel: Thank you. Do you have
information about the energy consumption

of a quantum computer
over the calculation power?

Andreas: Yeah, that's an interesting
point. I mean, for superconducting quantum

computers, there are like several costs
associated. I think right now the biggest

cost is probably of keeping the system
cooled down. So as that you need very low

temperatures, 20 or 10 millikelvin. In
order to achieve that, you need the so-

called delusion crisis that and these
systems that consume a lot of energy and

also materials like helium mixtures, which
are expensive and like maybe not so well,

kind of like a real material right now. I
think that would be the biggest

consumption in terms of energy use. I
honestly don't have so much of an idea. I

mean, the manipulation of the Qubit system
is done via microwaves and the power that

goes into the system is very small
compared to any of the power that we use

for cooling the system. So I would say for
the foreseeable future, the power

consumption should be dominated by like
the cooling and the setup costs and the

cost of the electronics as well. So the
classical electronics that that controls

the Qubit, which can also be quite
extensive for large system. So the Qubit

chip itself should be very should be
really negligible in terms of energy

consumption.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone number one

please.
Mic 1: Hello. I have a question in regards

to quantum simulation. So I would have
thought that with 53 Qubits,

there would already be something
interesting to do, since I think their

border the limit for more or less exact
quantum chemistry calculations on

classical computers is that there are 10
to 20 particles. So is there a more

complicated relation from particles to
Qubits that's missing here or what's the

problem?
Andreas: Yeah. So in the paper I couldn't

find an exact reason why they choose this
problem. I think there are probably two

aspects. One is that you don't have in the
system the like arbitrary Qubit control.

So to say you cannot run like any
Hamiltonian or quantum algorithm that you

want. You are like limited in terms of
connectivity. So it's possible that they

were not able to run any quantum algorithm
for simulation, which was not easy to run

also on a classical system, you know, so.
But I'm really not not sure why they

didn't. I think just if they would have a
have had this chance to do a quantum

simulation, they would probably have done
that instead, because that's, of course,

more impressive than randomization or
randomized algorithms. So because they

didn't do it, I think it was just probably
too complicated or not possible to realize

on the system. Yeah. Okay. So it's this.
But again, I don't know for sure yet.

Thank you.
Herald: Yes, and also speaking as a sometimes

quantum chemist, you can't directly map
Qubits to to atoms. They're not two level

systems. And you don't I mean, you usually
also simulate electrons and not just

atoms, but I'm not a speaker. We can
discuss later. Maybe microphone number two

please.
Mic 2: Thanks. Can you compare this

classic or general quantum computer to the
one by D-wave? That's one of the quantum

computers by a AWS offered. They have two
thousand Qubits or something.

Andreas: Yeah, that's a very interesting
question. So D-wave system is this so-

called adiabatic quantum computer, to
my knowledge. So this in this case the

computation works a bit differently. It's
the normal with this quantum computer that

Google produced. You have a gate sequence
that you run on your input Qubits and then

you get a result that you read out. With
the D-wave system it's more that you like

engineer like in Hamiltonian, which is
also which also consists of local

interactions between different Qubits. And
then you slowly changed this Hamiltonian

in order to like change to the ground
state of the system to a solution of a

problem that you're looking for. So. So
it's a different approach to quantum

computation. They also claimed that they
can can achieve what I did, achieve a

quantum supremacy, I think in a different
way for like an optimization problem. But

to my knowledge, the proof they have is
less rigid probably than, what the Google

Group produced here. So but again, I'm not
like an expert on that, a bit of quantum

computing. So I'm more like a gate based
person. So, yeah, I think though, the

proof that here the Google show is more
convincing in terms of like reproduce

reproducibility and really make the proof
that you are actually doing something that

cannot be done on a classical computer.
D-Wave will see the different view though.

Herald: All right. Let's go to the back.
Number seven, please. Hello. 7. You just

waved to me.
Mic 7: Hey, uh, hello. Uh, I was reading

that earlier this year IBM released the
first commercial Q one system or whatever

the name is. And you were mentioning
before to keep our expectations down to

Earth. So my question is, what kind of
commercial expectations is IBM actually

creating?
Andreas: Mm hmm. So I spoke to some

companies here in Germany that are
collaborating with IBM or D-Wave or Google

as well. And to ask what they're actually
doing with the quantum computers. They are

the the companies offer. And I think the
answer is that right now, a lot of

commercially, a lot of companies are
investigating this as something that could

potentially be very useful or very
relevant in five to 10 years. So they want

to get some experience and they want to
start collaborating. I don't think, at

least I don't know any reproduction use of
these systems where the quantum computer

would do some calculations, that would not
be doable on a classical system. But

again, I don't have a full overview of
that. I think now it's mostly for

experimentation and forgetting to notice
systems. I think the companies or most of

the customers there probably expect that
in five years or 10 years, the system will

systems will really be powerful enough to
do some useful computations with them as

well.
Herald: Thanks. All right. The Internet,

please.
Signal-Angel: With a quantum computer, you

can calculate things in parallel. But
there is this usability requirement. So

how much faster is a quantum
computer at the end of the day?

Andreas: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's true, so that
if you want to and, if you want to realize

classical algorithm, you have to do it in
a reversible way. But to my knowledge, you

can from an efficiency perspective,
implement any classical non reversible

algorithm as a reversible algorithm
without loss in complexity. So you can

have also like for a reversible
computation, you have universal gaits like

the control not gate that you can use to
express any logic function that you

require. You might need some additional
Qubits in compared to the amount of the

classical bits that you need for the
computation. But in principle, there is

nothing that keeps you from implementing
any classical function on a quantum

computer. In terms of actual runtime, of
course it depends on how fast you can run

individual operations. Right now, a single
Qubits operation, for example, on this

Google machine takes about I think 20 to
40 nanoseconds. So in that sense, the

quantum computers are probably much slower
than classical computers. But the idea is

anyway that you do only really the
necessary computations that you can't do

on a classical machine, on a quantum
computer and anything else you can do on a

normal classical system. So the quantum
process in this sense is only like a like

inside a core processor, like a GPU, in
that sense, I would say.

Herald: All right. Microphone number four,
please.

Mic 4: On the slide that shows Richard
Feynman, you said that quantum computers

were invented to simulate quantum systems.
And can you please elaborate on that?

Herald: You went past, huh?
Andreas: Yeah. So I don't have to link to

the lecture here. Unfortunately, the link
is broken, but you can find that online.

It's a 1982 lecture from Feynman, where he
discusses like how you would actually go

about simulating a quantum system, because
as we have shown like the if you want to

simulate a full quantum system, you need to
simulate the density matrix of the system

and that takes about that take, it takes
an exponential amount of memory and

computation in terms of like the number of
Qubits or quantum degrees of freedom that

you want to simulate. And with a classical
Turing machine, you couldn't do that in an

efficient way because every time you add a
single Qubit, you basically quadruple your

computational requirement. And that's
really where the idea came from. I think

from Feynman to think about a computing
system that would use quantum mechanics in

order to be able to do these kind of
simulations, because he saw probably that

for large quantum systems it would never
be possible to run, at least with our

current understanding of classical
computing. It would never be possible to

run a quantum simulation of a quantum
system on a classical computer in an

efficient way. Does that answer the
question?

Mic 4: Yeah.
Andreas: Okay.

Herald: All right. Microphone eight,
please.

Mic 8: As a physicist who's now doing
analog circuit design. I'm kind of

wondering why all the presentations about
quantum computers always use stage zero

and 1 and not multiple states. Is that a
fundamental limitation or is that just

just a simplification for the sake of the
presentation?

Andreas: So you mean why you don't use
like higher Qubit states or like...

Mic 8: Multi valued logic or even
continuous states?

Andreas: So in principle, the quantum bits
that we're using, they don't they're not

really two level systems. So there is not
only level zero and one, but also level

two tree and so on. You could use them, of
course, but the computational power of the

system is given as the number of states,
or like m for example, race to the power

of the number of Qubits. So M to the power
of N. So in that sense, if you add like

another state, you only change like. Like
a small affected and adding another Qubit.

So it's usually not very interesting to
add more states. What he would do instead,

is just add more Qubits to your system.
And for continuous variable quantum

mechanic quantum computation. I think
there is some use cases where this might

outperform like the digital quantum
computers, especially if you can engineer

your system to like mimic the Hamiltonian
of the system that you want to simulate.

So I think in this sense, in these cases,
it makes a lot of sense. For other cases

where you say, OK, you want to run a
general quantum computation, then like

such a digital quantum computer is
probably the best solution. And you could

also just add that run like a continuous
simulation of a quantum system on such a

gate based quantum system, just like the
linearly in the same order of complexity,

I would say. Does that answer the
question?

Mic 8: I think I delude myself to have
understood that the non diagonal elements

in the density matrix grow much faster
than the number of states in any and any

diagonal matrix element.
Andreas: I guess you could say like that.

Yeah, I have to think about.
Herald: All right. Number three, please.

Mic 3: What do you have to say about the
scepticism of people like Nikolai that

claim that inherent nice will be a
fundamental problem in scaling this

quantum computers?
Andreas: I mean, it's a valid concern, I

think. As of today, we don't have even for
a single Qubit shown error correction.

There are some first experiments, for
example, by the ShowCoup Lab in Yale that

showed some of the elements of error
correction for a single Qubit system, but

we haven't even managed today to keep a
single Qubit alive indefinitely. So that's

why I would say it's an open question.
It's a valid criticism. I think the next

five years will show if we are actually
able to run this quantum errors and if our

error models themselves are correct
because they only correct for certain

errors or if there's anything else that
keeps us from like building a large scale

system. So I think it's a totally valid
point.

Herald: Microphone five, please.
Mic 5: There has been a study on

factarising on adiabatic machines, which
requires a lock squared N Qubits while

Shor requires Log N. But as the adiabatic
systems have much higher Qubit numbers,

they were able to factorize on these
machines, much larger numbers than on the

normal devices. And that's something that
never shows up in the discussion. Do you

want to comment on that? Have you read the
study? What do you think? Are adiabatic

machines, bogus? Or, is that worth while
resolved?

Andreas: I'm not. Yeah, as I said, like an
expert at adiabatic quantum

computing. I know that there were some
like studies or investigations of the

D-wave system. Like I haven't read this
particular study about factorization. I

think adiabatic quantum computing is a
valid approach as well to quantum

computing. I just I'm not just just not
sure if currently like the results were

like shown with the same amount of like
rigidity or like rigid proves like for the

gate based quantum computer. But yeah, I'm
I really would have to look at the study

to to see that.
Herald: Can you maybe quickly say the

authors. So it's on the record. Yeah. If
your mike is still on number five.

Mic 5: Sorry, I don't.
Herald: Okay, no problem. Thank you. All

right.
Andreas: But yeah, I don't think adiabatic

quantum computing is like and I
think adiabatic quantum computing is a

valid choice or valid approach for doing
quantum computation as well.

Mic 5: So I can give you that. I can
search for the authors later and give it

to you.
Andreas: Okay. Okay. It would be great.

Thank you.
Herald: Thank you. Microphone four,

please.
Mic 4: What do you say about IBM's claim

that Google's supremacy claim is invalid
because the problem was not really hard?

Andreas: Yeah. So basically IBM, I think
said, okay, if you do some optimizations

on the way you simulate the systems, then
you can reduce this computation time from

10000 years to like maybe a few hours or
so. I think it's, of course, valid. It

might be a valid claim. I don't know if it
really invalidates the result because as I

said, like the computational power of like
the classical systems, they will also will

also increase in the coming years. Right
now, you could say that maybe if we

haven't achieved quantum supremacy in
regards to elect 2019 hardware, then maybe

we should just like look at the 2015
hardware and then we can say, okay, there,

probably we achieved that. In any case, I
think the most what's most impressive

about this result for me is not like, if
we are really in the supremacy regime or

maybe not. That's really the amount of..,
the degree of controlability of the

Qubits system that this group has
achieved. I think that's really the

important point here, regardless of
whether they actually achieved the

supremacy or not. Because it shows that
these kind of systems seem to be a good

architecture choice for building large
scale quantum processes. And this alone is

very valuable, I think, as a guide to
future research direction, regardless of

whether this is actually, you know, they
achieved this or not. Yeah, but yeah, I

can understand, of course, the criticism.
Mic 4: OK. One thing. The article is

called Quantum Annealing for Prime
Factorization appeared in Nature in

December 18. Authors Jiang, A. Britt, Alex
J. McCaskey, S. Humble and Kais.

Andreas: Okay, great. I think we'll have a
look at that again. Thanks.

Herald: All right. Microphone 6, do you
have a short question?

Mic 6: Yeah, hopefully. It is known that
it is not very easy to understand how

large quantum superposition goes into a
macroscopic state. So in the macroscopic

physical description. So apparently there
are a couple of things not understood. So

is there anything you know about when you
go two thousand, ten thousand, million

Qubits, could you expect the quantum
behavior to break down? Are there any

fundamental argument that this will not
happen or is this not a problem considered

recently?
Andreas: Huh, Okay. I'm not sure if I

fully understand the question. It's mostly
about like if you say like quantum

mechanics or some like scale variance so
that if you go to a certain scale and some

time, at some point you have like a
irreversibility or like a something like

that. Yeah. I mean, I think that a large
quantum systems that occur naturally, I

don't know. I like Bose Einstein
condensate, for example, has a lot of

degrees of freedom that are not
controlled, of course, but that also

quantum mechanical and there it seems to
work. So personally, I would think that

there is no such limit. But I mean, who
knows? It's like that's why we do like

experimental physics. So we will see as if
we reached it. But from like the theory of

quantum mechanics right now, there is no
indication that this should be such a

limit to my knowledge.
Herald: All right, so maybe we will see

you again in five years.
Andreas: Yeah.

Herald. So please thank Andreas, until I
ask once again. Thanks.

Applause

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