CES 2018: Intel Announces 49-Qubit Quantum Chip

Intel has brought quantum computing – still largely theoretical – much closer to reality. At CES 2018, the venerable chip maker announced a 49-qubit quantum chip.

If you’ve never been to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), you’re doing yourself a disservice. The annual celebration of TVs, widgets, and booths bigger than most houses is the mecha for tech geeks and the springboard for some of the greatest innovations and trends of the 20^th and 21^st centuries – the VCR, Commodore 64, Blu-Ray, and OLED TVs, amongst many others.

And sometimes, companies use Sin City’s glitzy platform to flaunt tech breakthroughs with no clear consumer application – Intel’s quantum chip, for example.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich called the 49-qubit quantum chip a “major breakthrough in quantum computing” and the next step to "quantum supremacy" –  according to researchers at Cornell University, this is when “quantum devices, without error correction, can perform a well-defined computational task beyond the capabilities of state-of-the-art classical computers.”

And quantum computing’s theoretical applications are limited only by the imagination. Quantum computing would use phenomena like superposition to solve problems much quicker than classical computers, opening up the blue sky floodgates to a level approaching the most fantastic science fiction.

Intel has no release date for their 49-qubit quantum chip, but we’re excited to see its eventual fallout.