Russia will create at least three 50-qubit quantum computers by the end of the year

At least three different 50-qubit quantum computers will be created in Russia by the end of 2024. This was announced on November 25 by Ruslan Yunusov, advisor to the Director General of Rosatom and co-founder of the Russian Quantum Center.

"By the end of the year we plan to achieve 50 qubits on the nuclear platform. And perhaps we will show another alternative computer on an ionic platform, also 50 qubits. That is, if everything goes well, Russia will have three quantum computers with 50 qubits at the end of the year, and maybe even more," he said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

Yunusov noted that Russia was working not only on one ionic computer that has already been created, but in several directions at once.

"When we compare different platforms with each other, it turns out that they have different accuracies, and the advantages of one or another manifest themselves depending on the specific type of tasks," he specified.

He added that there are also plans to create a 75-qubit quantum computer by 2025, but he emphasized that precision is more important.

"It is much more important to deal with increasing the accuracy of quantum computers in order to solve useful tasks," Yunusov said.

In addition, the advisor said, it is necessary to focus on building quantum computers on major platforms to begin with, even though there are others.

"There are several leading platforms in the world on which it is planned to build a quantum computer. These are superconductors, atoms, ions and photons. There are other platforms, but no one knows which one will be better, so we need to deal with at least the main ones," he explained.

"At the Microelectronics Forum, we will show a prototype of a 50-qubit quantum computer"

Gennady Krasnikov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on domestic discoveries and developments in the field of creating future technical systems

In September, the Microelectronics Forum demonstrated a prototype of the first domestic 50-qubit quantum computer on an ionic platform. It was developed at the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Before that, on June 25, specialists from the Research and Education Center (REC) "Functional Micro/Nanosystems launched the first domestic high-precision superconductor quantum processor. The computing complex was named Snowdrop 4Q. It is a system that includes a chip based on four qubits, modules for reading their signals with parametric cryoamplifiers and blocks of control electronics.

On October 14, Russia successfully tested the first domestic software product, which is designed to protect against cyberattacks using quantum computers. As the developers explained, at present, work on the creation of such devices is being actively carried out all over the world, so it is necessary to develop algorithms of post-quantum cryptography already now.