New The Quantum Observer Newsletter was published.
Summary
This week delivered two meaningful steps toward useful quantum computing. Google unveiled Willow and the Quantum Echoes algorithm, delivering the first verifiable quantum advantage. Using 65 qubits to measure OTOCs, Willow produced results in seconds that would take Frontier, a top supercomputer, years per data point. The outputs are deterministic and checkable, and the same technique helped validate molecular structures via NMR, signaling utility beyond contrived benchmarks.
IonQ reported two-qubit gate fidelities above 99.99 percent using a smooth gate that works without ground state cooling. That removes a major runtime bottleneck and keeps accuracy even with warmer ions, including across 432 two-qubit gates. Four-nines shifts feasibility from toy circuits to thousands of gates before heavy error correction, improving the practicality of surface codes and lowering the logical qubit cost despite slower per gate times.
Security takeaway: neither result breaks crypto today, but together they firm up the trajectory to cryptographically relevant machines. Early 2030s remains a plausible window, with aggressive paths in the late 2020s. CISOs should escalate from plans to action, inventory cryptography, prioritize PQC migration for long-lived data and critical paths, build crypto agility into architectures, and track vendor progress and real benchmarks to keep timelines current.
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