In my opinion, DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is very important and I'm personally glad to see DARPA doing their best to understand the current state of maturation of quantum computers. This is a technology that could turn the entire paradigm of information security on its head and make almost all current cyber security measures obsolete. You can bet that DARPA knows exactly where the large companies are when it comes to quantum computing (IBM and a couple other publicly traded companies come right to mind as leaders in this space) but this is one of those technologies where a "dark" start-up company or unpublished academic research could potentially be extremely disruptive. QBI is one of the many ways that DARPA, along with other government agencies, is trying to understand better the possible timelines involved in rolling out a scalable quantum computer. Given the steady progress over the past few years, I think it is likely that I will live to see powerful quantum computers available and I'm hoping this isn't a discipline that moves faster than the world can adapt.
We’re inviting U.S. & international #quantumcomputing companies – both small & large – to participate in our Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) proposers day Sept 3. The in-person & virtual event includes option for sidebar discussions with the QBI program manager: https://ow.ly/CYTl50SYMQy
Engineering and AI | ClearanceRecruiter.com
8moI'm not so sure we'll see a powerful quantum computer in our lifetime or not. It is hard to say because significant technical challenges still exist. It is unlikely that there will be a true mass market quantum computer because of the extremely low temperatures required to run one. It is possible that we will all have access to quantum computing through the cloud however. Yes, very disruptive if this were to happen anytime soon.