Summary
For a decade the modality race seemed settled. Superconducting led with Google and IBM. Trapped ions held the fidelity crown. Photonics stayed the outside bet. Then neutral atoms surged from 2023 to 2025. Harvard–MIT–QuEra reported a 280-qubit logical processor, a universal fault-tolerant design with 448 atoms, below-threshold error correction, and continuous operation over 3,000 qubits. Microsoft and Atom Computing announced plans for a 50 logical-qubit error-corrected system. Neutral atoms became a front-line contender almost overnight.
Meanwhile, silicon spin qubits advanced quietly. Over four years, multiple groups demonstrated gates above threshold, error correction, algorithms, multi-register scaling, and stabilizer-based error detection. As of March 2026 they reported universal logical operations and distillable magic states. Silicon has not posted the biggest devices, but it now has every building block. Crucially, it can tap the global semiconductor manufacturing base to scale.
Why this matters for quantum security: if silicon can scale through standard fabs, timelines to practical fault-tolerant machines could compress. Neutral atoms and silicon now look like the platforms to watch. CISOs should accelerate PQC adoption, enforce crypto agility, and reassess retention of long-lived sensitive data. Track hardware roadmaps and cloud access models, and fund proofs of concept that validate PQC and transition playbooks today.
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See the original article at: https://postquantum.com/quantum-computing/silicon-dark-horse-quantum-computing/