Peter Johnson - Evaluating Progress Toward Quantum Utility - IPAM at UCLA скачать в хорошем качестве

Peter Johnson - Evaluating Progress Toward Quantum Utility - IPAM at UCLA

Recorded 17 February 2026. Peter Johnson of Apollo Quantum presents "Evaluating Progress Toward Quantum Utility" at IPAM's Bridging the Gap Between NISQ and FTQC Workshop. Abstract: Interest in quantum computing is growing. This is not because current devices provide a practical advantage, but because of rising expectations that they may do so in the future. With each impressive yet highly technical advance, how should expectations about future quantum utility be updated? Governments, as major funders of quantum research, face this question directly as they seek to allocate resources effectively. To address this, several recent government programs have invested heavily in assessing whether current research trajectories plausibly lead to quantum utility. These efforts have created a demand for rigorous, independent evaluation of progress across quantum technologies. Yet a central challenge for such evaluation is determining which indicators meaningfully track progress toward utility. In this talk, I review common indicators of progress used in the literature, such as physical qubit counts and error rates relative to fault-tolerant thresholds. I argue that their interpretation should depend on often-implicit assumptions about hardware scalability and fault-tolerant protocols. Considering this, I conclude by discussing how such indicators can be used to update expectations about achieving quantum utility with early fault-tolerant quantum computers and inform funding decisions. Learn more online at: https://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/wo...