A Thought Experiment on Accelerated HPC Cloud Growth

According to a recent Hyperion Research study of 115 current and interested QC end-users from both HPC and enterprise IT organizations, the majority would consider a wide range of quantum computing (QC) technology and use-case options spanning new QC and QC-inspired applications, as well as speed-ups of existing applications delivered through a mix of QC or hybrid QC/classical systems. Likewise, these same QC buyers/users reported relatively modest expectations for realized performance gains from QC technology: 78% of respondents would see a performance boost of less than 250X as justification for using QC, and 42% would only need 50X or below. Such expectations bode well for the quantum computing sector writ large as QC developers and suppliers can explore a broad array of quantum technologies in both hardware and software with some assurance that end-users will be open to a span of QC use-case options with relatively modest near-term performance gains.

A review of the number of quantum communications (QComm) research papers published over the last five years shows that QComm basic science as well as R&D efforts are centered within China, with the US a distant second and perhaps falling further behind. Most other nations are publishing a steady, but smaller stream of QComm-related publications well behind what China is producing.