Quantum technology is moving from the laboratory to everyday life, but it will still take several years to achieve widespread applications

The latest research published in Science on December 4th indicates that quantum technology is accelerating from the laboratory stage to practical applications, and is currently at a critical turning point similar to the "transistor moment" in the early development of computers.

This study, jointly conducted by the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Innsbruck in Austria, and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is the first to use an AI big model to evaluate the technology readiness level (TRL) of six quantum hardware platforms, revealing the core challenges and breakthrough paths on the path to industrialization.

In the past decade, quantum technology has gradually developed from the basic research stage to systems that can support early applications in fields such as communication, sensing, and computing. Researchers attribute this rapid maturity process to the continuous "three-way cooperation" between academia, government agencies and industry, which has also promoted the rapid rise of the microelectronics era.

This reminds people of the state of computing technology before the invention of the transistor in 1947, "emphasized Professor David Awschalum, the corresponding author of the paper and director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange." The basic physical principles have been established, and functional systems already exist. It is urgent to build a collaborative ecosystem between industry, academia, and research to realize the potential for practical scale

In terms of systematic research, the paper compared six mainstream quantum hardware platforms, including superconducting quantum bits, trapped ions, spin defects, semiconductor quantum dots, neutral atoms, and photon quantum bits. The research team uses large-scale language models such as ChatGPT and Gemini to evaluate the technology maturity (TRL) of various technologies in the four major application directions of computing, simulation, networking, and sensing.

The TRL score ranges from 1 (basic principle verification) to 9 (running in real environments), but a high score does not mean that the technology is close to the end point. For example, there are still a large number of applications that require millions of physical qubits and higher fault tolerance performance, which current technology cannot meet.

The co-author of the paper, William D. Oliver from MIT, stated that it is necessary to maintain a correct historical perspective when evaluating maturity. He pointed out that although semiconductor chips in the 1970s had the highest maturity at that time, their performance was not as good as any ordinary chip today. Similarly, the high TRL of quantum technology today only means that early system level demonstrations have been achieved, but there is still a long way to go before the ultimate goal.

According to the evaluation results, the most mature platforms currently include superconducting quantum bits for quantum computing, neutral atoms for quantum simulation, photon quantum bits for quantum networks, and spin defect technology for quantum sensing.

In addition, the paper also summarizes a series of common challenges that urgently need to be addressed in the scaling up of quantum systems. Among them, materials science and manufacturing processes need to be significantly improved in order to achieve reproducible, high-quality, and mass-produced devices, and to integrate them into a stable and cost controllable OEM system. The engineering bottleneck is also concentrated in wiring and signal transmission. Currently, most platforms still need to provide independent control channels for a large number of qubits, and simply increasing the number of connections cannot support scaling to the million level. This is similar to the "tyranny of numbers" problem encountered in the field of computer engineering in the 1960s. In addition, continuous breakthroughs are needed in areas such as power transmission, temperature control, automatic calibration, and system control.

The paper points out that many key technological paths will develop along a trajectory similar to traditional electronics in the future, and it often takes years or even decades to move from the laboratory to industrial deployment. Therefore, the importance of a system level, top-down design philosophy, avoiding premature closure of shared knowledge systems, and maintaining rational expectations for the development schedule of quantum technology. Researchers say that many key breakthroughs in history have relied on patience, which also reminds us to adjust our expectations for the pace of quantum technology implementation appropriately.