来源 | VentureBeat（转载请注明来源）
作者 | Richard Murray
编译 | 数乾坤（数据观）
近日，谷歌宣布在量子计算机纠错技术方面取得重要突破，引起广泛的关注和热议。作为一项新兴技术，量子计算一直被认为是量子科技领域的重要研究方向之一。量子计算不仅可以增强计算机功能，更有可能重塑应对气候变化、饥饿和疾病的能力，破解和更新常见的加密技术，带来巨大经济效益，对全球数字经济产生影响，并形成地缘政治战略意义。因此，量子计算也被全球主要经济体视为一项战略技术。
ORCA computing联合创始人兼首席执行官，UKQuantum董事长兼董事Richard Murray近期发表评论文章表示，2023年或是量子计算突破式发展的一年。
2023 could be the breakthrough year for quantum computing
2022 has been a dynamic year for quantum computing. With commercial breakthroughs such as the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) investing in its first quantum computer, the launch of the world’s first quantum computer capable of advantage over the cloud and the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for ground-breaking experiments with entangled photons, the industry is making progress.
2022年对于量子计算来说是充满活力的一年。随着商业的不断突破，如：英国国防部（MoD）投资其第一台量子计算机，推出世界上第一台能够在云端发挥优势的量子计算机，以及因纠缠光子突破性实验而获得诺贝尔物理学奖……量子计算行业正取得突破性进展。
At the same time, 2022 saw the tremendous accomplishment of the exaflop barrier broken with the Frontier supercomputer. At a cost of roughly $600 million and requiring more than 20 megawatts of power, we are approaching the limits of what classical computing approaches can do on their own. Often for practical business reasons, many companies are not able to fully exploit the increasing amount of data available to them. This hampers digital transformation across areas most reliant on high-performance computing (HPC): healthcare, defense, energy and finance.
与此同时，2022年Frontier超级计算机打破了一百万万亿次(exaflop)超算屏障，获得了巨大成就，这样的成本大约为6亿美元，以及超过20兆瓦的电力，我们正在接近经典计算方法自身能够做到的极限。通常出于实际的商业原因，许多公司无法充分利用他们所掌握的越来越庞大的数据。这大大阻碍了医疗、国防、能源和金融等最依赖高性能计算（HPC）的领域实现数字化转型。
To stay ahead of the curve, 91% of global business leaders are investing or planning to invest in quantum computing. According to reports, 70% are developing real-life use cases and 61% are planning to spend $1 million or more over the next three years.
为了保持领先地位，91%的全球商业领袖正在投资或计划投资量子计算。有关报告显示，70%的人正在开发现实量子计算在生活中的应用案例，61%的人计划在未来三年内花费100万美元或更多在量子计算的研发上。
As the technology becomes more exciting and the industry gathers pace, the pressure is on for quantum to deliver. But the voice of skeptics will also grow louder. In the face of those that say quantum computers will never be useful due to their complexity and limited results to date, the question on everyone’s mind is, will 2023 be a breakthrough year for quantum computing?
随着技术的演变，行业也以激动人心的步伐加速发展，量子化的压力随之而来。怀疑者的声音也越来越多，面对那些说量子计算机由于其复杂性和迄今为止有限成果以至于它永远派不上用场的人，每个人心中的疑问是：2023年是否能成为量子计算实现突破的一年？
Technical innovations vs market incumbents
技术创新与市场占有者
During 2022, we saw the creation of many industry incumbents who used SPACs, IPOs, mergers or corporate sponsorship to build themselves substantial war chests to pursue some serious engineering activity. While these significant scale-up activities will continue, 2023 will also be the year of innovation and possible disruption.
2022年期间，我们看到许多行业老牌企业的诞生，他们利用特殊目的收购公司、首次公开募股、合并或企业赞助来为自己建立大量资金，以从事一些严肃的工程活动。虽然这些重要的扩大活动将继续进行，但 2023 年也将是创新和可能颠覆的一年。
Amongst the big players, new players will emerge with alternative approaches towards quantum computing: Perhaps replacing qubits and gate models with qumodes, using model simulations and quantum annealing models.
在这些大玩家中，新公司将以替代性的方法出现在量子计算中：也许用量子密码代替量子比特和门模型，使用模型模拟和量子退火模型。
The aim of these newcomers will not be to solely achieve universal computing, but rather more specific and useful computation that can be delivered in a shorter timescale. The challenge will be whether these new machines can be applied to something useful and that the industry will care about them in the near term. The quantum supply chain is also developing with component-based suppliers — such as quantum processor vendors — that will shake loose how full-stack systems are built and break the economics of current black box approaches.
这些初来乍到者的目标不仅是实现通用计算，而是更具体和有用的计算，可以在更短时间内交付。挑战在于这些新机器是否能应用于有用的东西，以及行业在短期内是否会关心它们。量子供应链也在与基于组件的供应商（例如量子处理器供应商）一起发展，这将摆脱全栈系统的构建方式，并打破当前黑盒方法的经济性。
Such work will force further discussions about the right and best way to compare and benchmark technologies, performance and the industry.
此类工作将推动进一步讨论比较和基准化技术、性能和行业的正确和最佳方式。
Competition for financing
融资竞争
Despite the turmoil in the international financial markets, quantum computing may continue to buck the trend with large funding rounds. Also, 2023 will see an interesting comparison between public and privately owned quantum companies.
尽管国际金融市场动荡不安，但量子计算可能会继续逆势而上，进行大轮融资。另外，2023年，将看到公有和私有量子公司之间有趣的较量。
Public companies will continue to put their capital to work, but at the cost of the short-term attention of investors and short sellers. While they and the rest of the industry push to meet meaningful and substantial technical milestones, they will have only partial success in shrugging off the short-term pressures to validate the business. It’s likely that a race to capture the first market share to meet revenue predictions will ensue.
上市公司将继续把他们的资本用于工作，但代价是投资者和卖空者的短期关注。虽然他们和业内其他人努力实现有意义和实质性的技术里程碑，但他们在摆脱短期压力以验证业务方面只会取得部分成功。很可能随之而来的是争夺第一个市场份额以实现收入预测的竞赛。
In the private space, and with a global recession looming, large companies’ valuations will likely struggle to compete with previous expectations. This will be countered to an extent by the increasing appetite for deep tech, as well as new, exciting developments. Within the recent glut of new quantum companies, many will struggle, and both successful and less successful companies will be acquired as the big players consolidate. In general, 2023 will likely end with fewer quantum companies than in 2022.
在私营领域，全球经济衰退迫在眉睫，大型公司的估值可能将难以与之前的预期竞争。这将在一定程度上被对深度技术以及新的、令人兴奋的发展的日益增长的欲望所抵制。在最近大量的新量子公司中，许多公司将陷入困境，随着大公司的整合，成功和不太成功的公司都将被收购。总的来说，2023年结束时，量子公司的数量可能会比2022年少。
For both public and private quantum companies, it will help when a few make strides toward creating useful cases with near-term quantum computers. In the pursuit of pragmatic value-creation, this will come in many forms — including quantum sensing and comms, quantum-inspired, and hybrid quantum-classical approaches with small-scale systems.
对于公共和私人量子公司而言，当少数公司在使用近期量子计算机创建有用案例方面取得进展时，这将有所帮助。在追求务实的价值创造过程中，这将以多种形式出现——包括量子传感和通信、量子启发以及具有小规模系统的混合量子经典方法。
A few successes here will be industry-changing, which will start to bring about a focus that the industry has been waiting for. The consequences will ripple through the entire market.
这些成就将改变行业，成为行业一直等待的转折点，而后波及整个市场。
Making progress toward fault-tolerant machines
在容错机器方面取得进展
Despite progress on short-term applications, 2023 will not see error correction disappear. Far from it, the holy grail of quantum computing will continue to be building a machine capable of fault tolerance. 2023 may create software or hardware breakthroughs that will show how we’re closer than we think, but otherwise, this will continue to be something that is achieved far beyond 2023.
尽管在短期应用方面量子计算取得了进展，但2023年将纠错不会消失。远非如此，量子计算的蓝图将继续是建立一个能够容错的机器。2023年可能会创造出软件或硬件的突破，这比我们想象的更接近，除此之外，要远在2023年之后才能实现。
Even though it’s everything to some quantum companies and investors, the future corporate users of quantum computing will largely see it as too far off the time horizon to care much. The exception will be government and anyone else with a significant, long-term interest in cryptography.
尽管这对一些量子公司和投资者来说意味着一切，但量子计算未来的企业用户将在很大程度上认为它离时间跨度太远而不太关心。政府和其他对密码学有重大、长期兴趣的人将是例外。
However, regardless of those long time horizons, 2023 will define clearer blueprints and timelines for building fault-tolerant quantum computers for the future. Indeed, there is also an outside chance that next year will be the year when quantum rules out the possibility of short-term applications for good, and doubles down on the 7- to 10-year journey towards large-scale fault-tolerant systems.
然而，不管这些漫长的时间跨度如何，2023年将为未来构建容错量子计算机确定更清晰的蓝图和时间表。事实上，明年也有可能是量子永远排除短期应用可能性的一年，并在 7 到 10 年的大规模容错系统之旅中加倍努力。
Governments, users and HPC
政府、用户和高性能计算
2022 saw the German government conclude the tendering process for some very large quantum computing projects, with one example of a €67m contract for two projects. In 2023, that trend will continue with yet more public procurements for quantum computing.
2022 年，德国政府完成了一些超大型量子计算项目的招标过程，其中一个例子是两个项目的 6700 万欧元合同。到 2023 年，随着更多的量子计算公共采购，将有更多的量子计算公共采购。
Those tenders and the fact that they will be run through several of the world’s HPC centers will force the quantum computing industry to live up to the rigor of tender requirements, and the delivery obligations which come with it. So long as those tenders are run well, these activities will force up the maturity of the technology, and the companies in this space.
这些招标以及它们将通过全球多个 HPC 中心进行的事实，将迫使量子计算行业达到严格的招标要求，以及随之而来的交付义务。只要这些招标运行良好，这些活动将迫使该技术和该领域的公司变得更加成熟。
Alongside that, the sophistication of the user community will develop dramatically this year. Expect the launch of several ‘industrial challenges’ delivered by teams of in-house quantum experts. Again, this increasing maturity will act as a force for good within the industry, helping to create great strides toward the search for concrete applications and roadmaps.
除此之外，今年用户社区的成熟度将显着提高。期待由内部量子专家团队发起的多项“工业挑战”。同样，这种日益成熟的技术将成为行业内的一股良性力量，有助于在寻找具体应用和路线图方面取得长足进步。
Geopolitics standing in the way
地缘政治阻碍
Geopolitics will continue to shape quantum as it does the rest of the economy; this shaping could reach a fever pitch with the growing separation between the U.S. and China. As the race is on to develop quantum computers to gain a strategic lead in cybersecurity, intelligence operations and the economic industry, expect increasing restrictions to limit technological exchange and increasing impact on supply chains. This will be partially offset through bi and multilateral agreements between nations, although the specter of nationalism will linger.
地缘政治将继续影响量子，就像它影响其他经济领域一样。随着大国之间的较量日益严峻，这种阻碍可能会达到白热化的程度。随着开发量子计算机以在网络安全、情报行动和经济产业中获得战略领先地位的竞赛正在进行，预计越来越多的限制将限制技术交流和对供应链的影响越来越大。这将通过国家间的双边和多边协议部分抵消，尽管民族主义的幽灵将挥之不去。
But how will European and UK companies fare? Many are fearful of being caught up in the middle of the China-U.S. tech competition, and so are urgently designing quantum tools to protect their interests.
欧洲和英国的公司将如何应对？许多人担心被卷入大国科技竞争的漩涡中，因此正在紧急设计量子工具以保护自己的利益。
A breakthrough year for quantum
量子突破的一年
So as we look forward, it’s no longer a question of if quantum computing will be available but when? 2023 may be the year in which some ask — and perhaps even claim now. Whereas others will continue to say, ‘of course not.’’
因此，当我们展望未来，这不再是一个是否会有量子计算的问题，而是何时可用？2023 年也许是一些人提出疑问或者声称能够实现的一年，而其他人则会继续说，“当然不是。”
With more and more companies adopting quantum to explore its potential, we will certainly leave 2023 more aware of the benefits and timeline. This may help companies better understand what their future could look like with quantum.
随着越来越多的公司采用量子来探索其潜力，我们肯定会在 2023 年更加了解其好处和时间表。这可能有助于公司更好地了解他们的量子未来会是什么样子。
Yet however little we know about what the future holds, one thing is certain: The world will be watching.
尽管我们对未来知之甚少，有一件事可以肯定——全世界都在关注量子计算。
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