Quantum leaps are generally assumed to be instantaneous, but researchers have figured out how to intercept them midway, which may be useful in quantum computing.

D-Wave Systems today unveiled the roadmap for its 5,000-qubit quantum computer. Components of D-Wave’s next-generation quantum computing platform will come to market between now and mid-2020 via ongoing quantum processing unit (QPU) and cloud-delivered software updates. The complete system will be available through cloud access and for on-premise installation in mid-2020.

Binary digits (bits) are the basic units of information in classical computing while quantum bits (qubits) make up quantum computing. Bits are always in a state of 0 or 1, while qubits can be in a state of 0, 1, or a superposition of the two. Quantum computing leverages qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave has been developing its own quantum computers that use quantum annealing.

D-Wave is mainly focused on solving optimization problems, so its quantum computers can’t be directly compared to the competition. Indeed, many have questioned whether D-Wave’s systems have quantum properties, and thus performance that classical computers can’t match. In the meantime, D-Wave continues to improve and sell its systems.

Gating—controlling the state of one qubit conditioned on the state of another—is a key procedure in all quantum information processors. As the scale of quantum processors increases, the qubits will need to interact over larger and larger distances, which presents an experimental challenge in solid-state architectures. Wan et al. implemented the 20-year-old theoretical proposal of quantum gate teleportation that allows separated qubits to interact effectively. They deterministically teleported a controlled-NOT gate between two computational qubits in spatially separated zones in a segmented ion trap, demonstrating a feasible route toward scalable quantum information processors.

Science, this issue p. 875

Large-scale quantum computers will require quantum gate operations between widely separated qubits. A method for implementing such operations, known as quantum gate teleportation (QGT), requires only local operations, classical communication, and shared entanglement. We demonstrate QGT in a scalable architecture by deterministically teleporting a controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate between two qubits in spatially separated locations in an ion trap. The entanglement fidelity of our teleported CNOT is in the interval (0.845, 0.872) at the 95% confidence level. The implementation combines ion shuttling with individually addressed single-qubit rotations and detections, same- and mixed-species two-qubit gates, and real-time conditional operations, thereby demonstrating essential tools for scaling trapped-ion quantum computers combined in a single device.