‘Teleportation’ breakthrough could solve quantum computing’s scalability problem

Researchers at the University of Oxford have demonstrated distributed quantum computing for the first time by connecting two separate quantum processors via a photonic network interface. By using optical fibers to entangle quantum bits in separate modules, quantum logic operations can be performed across the modules via quantum teleportation.

The method makes it possible to link together small quantum units, which could potentially lead to functioning quantum computer systems on a large scale that could perform calculations in a few hours that would take today’s supercomputers several years.

Quantum computing has long had a scalability problem, in that packing together the large number of qubits necessary to achieve theorized quantum processing leaps would require computers of immense size. By linking together smaller quantum devices, the researchers suggest that this vast processing scale could be achieved through a distributed network rather than a single machine.