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From 1981, when the idea of computing with quantum principles first appeared, to today, as quantum computers move closer to computing while fixing their own errors.
12 eventsMilestone 7Release 3Research 2
Milestone
Google announced that it ran a calculation called "Quantum Echoes" on Willow. The result can be checked again on another quantum computer, and the calculation is far faster than a supercomputer.
Source Google blog — Quantum Echoes
Milestone
John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis won the Nobel Prize in Physics for showing quantum tunneling in an electrical circuit. This work is the root of today's superconducting qubits.
Source Nobel Prize announcement
Milestone
Google showed on its chip Willow that errors fall as the group of qubits gets larger. This is a key step toward a quantum computer that computes while fixing errors.
Source Google blog — Willow
Milestone
Researchers from Harvard, MIT and QuEra reported in Nature that they ran calculations with 48 "logical qubits", groups of qubits combined to resist errors.
Source Nature paper
Release
IBM unveiled Condor, a chip holding more than 1,000 qubits. On the same day it also released Heron, a chip with fewer errors.
Source Wikipedia — IBM Condor
Milestone
Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the Nobel Prize in Physics for experiments with entangled particles of light (photons) that opened the way for quantum information science.
Source Nobel Prize announcement
Milestone
Google reported in Nature that its 53-qubit chip Sycamore did in about 200 seconds a calculation that would have taken a supercomputer of the time a very long while. IBM argued against that comparison.
Source Google Research blog
Release
IBM opened a 5-qubit quantum computer through the cloud, so people outside the lab could run quantum circuits.
Release
D-Wave announced the D-Wave One, which uses "quantum annealing" to solve certain optimization problems. It works differently from a general-purpose quantum computer that can do many kinds of calculations.
Source Wikipedia — D-Wave Systems
Milestone
IBM researchers ran Shor's algorithm for the first time on real hardware, a 7-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance device, and factored 15.
Source Wikipedia — Shor's algorithm
Research
Peter Shor published a method showing that a quantum computer could factor large numbers quickly. The worry that today's internet encryption must be replaced started here.
Source Wikipedia — Shor's algorithm
Research
At a physics of computation conference at MIT, Richard Feynman said that to imitate nature properly, we need a machine that computes with quantum principles.
Source Wikipedia — Timeline of quantum computing and communication
New to this field? Start with First steps in quantum computing, a plain-language guide to the big picture.
The events were chosen and described by AI, and each date was checked against the source listed with it (an official announcement, a paper or Wikipedia). Dates follow the source: Korean events in Korean time, others in local time or UTC, so a day's difference is possible. The timeline does not grow by itself; new events are checked and added by hand. Report an errorLast updated
