US Department of Energy launches quantum computer development competition

Photo by Lars Ploughmann via Flickr under CC BY SA 2.0

The government is incentivising companies to demonstrate quantum computers capable of tackling ‘currently intractable’ problems, in ‘first-of-a-kind’ competition worth US$215m

The US Department of Energy has launched a US$215m competition that aims to accelerate the development and deployment of quantum computers.

In a notice published on 17 September, the Department of Energy (DOE) invited domestic firms to demonstrate the “world’s first fault-tolerant scientifically relevant quantum computers (SRQCs)” capable of tackling “currently intractable” problems in chemistry, materials, physics, and applied mathematics.

Applicants are invited to submit proposals to deploy quantum computers “with at least 100 logical qubits that are capable of performing hundreds of millions fault-tolerant operations and scientific demonstration programs”, the government notice said. 

Quantum computing is an emerging technology that processes information using principles of quantum mechanics rather than traditional binary logic. Unlike binary systems, where computing bits are given values of 0 or 1 from computing code, quantum bits (qubits) can represent 0, 1, or both simultaneously. This allows qubits to exist in multiple states at the same time, enabling parallel paths in computer programs, and therefore the potential for massive increases in processing power.