Watson is the IBM AI platform - it’s a huge part of its offering

At a briefing with IBM I was told they have a large number of finance and pharmaceutical customers due to the ability quantum will have to carry out rapid calculations. They’ve also recently signed a deal with Vodafone for network analysis using quantum computing.

Obviously the real benefit isn’t here yet - it will take more qubits (hundreds of thousands) and better fidelity and error correction - but there are existing use cases. Some of these are algorithms for fraud detection running on IBM hardware.

Apparently there are significant wait times to use quantum hardware available via AWS

Sorry - should have clarified it is a goal of a 4,000+ quantum computer from 2025 with the aim that three together will be 16,000 qubits.

Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and vice president of IBM Quantum said 2023 is a major inflection point for quantum computing, the starting point when the quantum-centric supercomputer is first realised and scaling is enabled. He said that it does so by “combining quantum communication and computation to increase computational capacity”.

British startup Universal Quantum is taking a similar approach, developing multi-chip quantum computers for more rapid scaleup.

But it is still some time before we reach any real supremacy as a study by the University of Sussex found we'd need 13 million qubits to crack 256 bit encryption in a day.

It’s not an easy one to explain But basically (over simplified) you’re manipulating atoms and the fact in quantum physics they can hold multiple states.

The reaction and changes create signals and combined these can be used to process calculations - solving complex equations.

I don’t have a degree - just a lot of experience writing about science and technology. I am doing an astrophysics degree as a mature student.

This article is useful for an explanation. But down the line you’ll interact with one using an abstraction layer. We don’t really write in assembly today, we use something like python and the same will apply to quantum.

https://www.quantumbusinessnews.com/applications/how-a-quantum-computer-actually-works?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=enter-quantum-22&utm_content=nonbrand&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIp77gpIPt-gIVixWLCh2TRgceEAAYAiAAEgLEJvD_BwE

That is my bad. I phrased it badly to fit it in the character limit. What it means by takeover is before quantum takes over as dominant in solving those niche problems

The algorithms used in modelling fluid dynamics clearly have a place and testing on existing quantum hardware has shown there is a clear benefit/potential benefit to running certain algorithms on quantum hardware over supercomputers.
In this case Rolls-Royce will be using an abstraction layer built by Classiq that effectively lets developers write simulations that can be split between linear tasks on a quantum computer and non-linear tasks on a classical computer.

I was over simplifying - but yes I agree their use is limited to certain problems - but for the industries where they are useful the change will be substantial.

Also abstraction layers like those developed by Classiq can increase the number of usable applications

>Eli5

I nearly had to ask to explain Eli5.
Quantum computing is a new way of solving maths problems. Instead of 1s and 0s (bits) to process information, it uses 0, 1 and any combination of 0 and 1 (qubits) - giving many more ways to solve those problems.

It basically means a quantum computer can solve incredibly complication problems in minutes that would take a supercomputer tens of thousands of years.

But right now they're useful in very limited ways - over time they'll become more useful until they can beat out supercomputers.

Classiq creates an abstraction layer that lets you write algorithms in Python

Rolls-Royce says it is investing heavily now in quantum technology despite no quantum computers being available that can perform the calculations to a necessary standard.

It is between 3 and ten years away from 'advantage' and longer still from 'supremacy' but Rolls-Royce says it has to start now as it can take longer than that to get the algorithms correct .