Source: MSN

International Business Machines said Thursday its research shows “quantum advantage”—a point at which quantum computers perform computations beyond conventional ones—and that these results can be rigorously validated.

The findings, which mark a step toward practical application of the nascent technology, were published in a trio of papers by IBM and its research partners. These include the University of Chicago, Japan’s RIKEN national research institute, and the quantum computing software firms Qedma, BlueQubit and Algorithmiq.

“We’re in the quantum advantage era,” said Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research. “Scientists can trust it. Now it’s moving from people benchmarking the systems to using these for science to look at applications.”

The news comes as Big Blue races to show that its quantum computing business can be profitable.

Earlier this month, the company suffered its biggest share drop in history after it issued a profit warning citing a shift in customer spending from software to AI hardware and memory chips. IBM said the performance of its software and infrastructure business fell short of expectations in the second quarter.

Since then, IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has offered an optimistic take on the company’s future, arguing quantum computing will begin to power its growth in a matter of years. The company’s first-mover advantage in quantum could boost its fortunes the way being a first mover in GPUs did for Nvidia, he recently told The Wall Street Journal.

IBM is going up against tech giants like Microsoft and Google, but also a host of startups in the quantum space.

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