Sept 28 (Reuters) - PsiQuantum is aiming to deliver its first commercial quantum computing system in under six years, its CEO said as the startup announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop advanced fridges for its machines.
"The first system that's actually capable of solving important problems that people want to know the answer to - that's just a handful of years away," he said in an interview.
Estimates for the development of practical quantum computing by other experts in the field typically put it at a decade or even 20 or more years away.
The company needs to reach roughly 1 million quantum bits, or qubits, to be of practical use, O'Brien said.
Because of the immense computational power in quantum computing, there is a gamut of potential applications from materials science to national security to finance.
Persons:
Jeremy O'Brien, GlobalFoundries, O'Brien, Max A, Edwina Gibbs
Organizations:
U.S . Department of Energy, Accelerator Laboratory, Palo, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Thomson
Locations:
Palo Alto , California, Silicon, San Francisco