Thomas Black: The quantum computer revolution is tantalizingly close

When the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or Eniac, was first built by the University of Pennsylvania for the U.S. Army in 1946, it weighed about 30 tons and had 18,000 vacuum tubes that filled an expansive room. The speed of that first programmable, general-purpose digital computer was about 5,000 hertz, which means it could perform 5,000 additions per second. It cost about $9 million to build in today’s dollars.

Now, a typical laptop can do more than 3 billion calculations per second and costs around $1,000.

The point is that technology usually starts out as clunky, slow and expensive. As it becomes more useful, the improvements accelerate. Quantum computing is still in a pre-Eniac stage, but it’s close to making a real impact. In fact, an important milestone is just around the corner, and dozens of large companies are preparing for this breakthrough.

It’s easy to overlook the progress in quantum computing amid the noise of the artificial-intelligence revolution driven by Nvidia Corp.’s powerful classical computer chips, which are adept at simulating the performance without the technical drawbacks. Quantum computers, though, hold the promise of accelerating research for drug discoveries and new materials, helping logistics companies design more efficient routes, improving financial risk management and playing a key role in encryption and cybersecurity.