[HN Gopher] A new trick brings stability to quantum operations
___________________________________________________________________
A new trick brings stability to quantum operations
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10285-1
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22112
Author : joko42
Score : 221 points
Date : 2026-04-10 04:04 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ethz.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (ethz.ch)
| joko42 wrote:
| Seems like we are moving from theory to pactice faster than
| expected.
| adrian_b wrote:
| > "We can now make lots of swap gates with neutral atoms", says
| Tilman Esslinger, "but of course we still need a few other
| ingredients to build a working quantum computer."
| SideQuark wrote:
| This is not a 17000 qubit general computer. Read the paper.
| dathinab wrote:
| yes, while this may not be a 17k qubit computer and has ways to
| go to get there the insights from it will likely help us to get
| there faster
|
| and it's not the only "this is moving faster then expected new"
|
| a year or so(?) ago some investments happen which make only
| sense if there had been some unpublished break through in
| hardware (through you never can exclude foolish absurd high
| Risiko investments)
|
| then more recently google researchers had some break through
| wrt. quantum algorithms, it's not generally assumed that 10k
| qubits (in the right setup) are enough to break 256 elliptic
| curve cryptography (or 2048bit RSA) _in minutes_!
|
| and there also where other breakthroughs quantum computer wrt.
| hardware
|
| the general consensus of people more knowledgeable in this
| field seems to be going in the direction that you must _finish
| fully migrate to post quantum cryptography by 2029_.
|
| Note that this isn't a "100% guarantee there are cable quantum
| computers in 2030", but a "the chance of this happening is too
| high to not be prepared by then".
|
| Overall:
|
| - from a academic/paper background 2029 seems to be the
| deadline to finish migrating to post quantum cryptography
|
| - claudflare agrees and has moved up it's internal deadline to
| 2029
|
| - same for Google, Google also seem to have prioritized quantum
| secure authentication over harvest now/decrypt later
| protections, which implies they are seriously worried about
| their authentication breaking potentially as early as 2030
|
| - IBM expect some "moonshot" attacks against high value targets
| already in 2029
|
| ___
|
| Through overall what does that mean for most people?
|
| - if you run some small low security service then probably for
| now nothing, but make sure you can move to pq if the tooling
| (webpki, TLS, etc.) does
|
| - for webpki, TLS and co having well working and by default
| supported pq cryptography is paramount
|
| - if you have some very sensitive material where it's a big
| problem if it leaks even years later, then you have a problem
| because you probably should have already migrated to post
| quantum cryptography 1-2 years ago ... Note that symmetric
| encryption is mostly unaffected. Sure there are a lot of people
| saying it's "slashed in half" (e.g. 128bit => 64bit) but
| luckily that isn't fully true. I personally still would go with
| 256bit where viable, often there is little reason not to. BUT a
| lot of the ways of sharing that symmetric key use encryption
| which should be assumed to be broken soon.
|
| - for VPNs if they allow complementing the asym. crypto with a
| symmetric key do that now (e.g. wireguard pre-shared key) but
| that is for many use cases a hen/egg issue as how do you
| securely exchange the pre-shared key? So look out for changes
| in the tooling/ecosystem.
|
| - for DevOps, look out for changes in the ecosystem especially
| webpki/TLS/certs and look out for tools which have a high
| chance to not mitigate in time
|
| - for Devs post quantum cryptography often looks like it could
| "just slot in" but that often isn't fully the case due to very
| different key sizes and performance characteristics. Look out
| for it. Also making you system ready to migrate to pq-safety
| was a recommendation by NSA and pretty much any other national
| cyber security agency for years by now. Furthermore with the
| standardization of ML-KEM the recommendation shifted to using
| that where viable (potentially in a hybrid KEM). So if you now
| notice that you never bother to check/plane ahead you probably
| should give it some priority now as you may be found to have
| acted in neglect which could in unlucky cases turn into legal
| liabilities.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Non-paywalled research paper:
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22112
| snthpy wrote:
| For real? I wouldn't have thought so many would be possible so
| soon. Might actually need to look into quantum computing again
| after 20 years.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| It is still orders of magnitude away from breaking RSA 2048
| even under the most optimistic assumptions. And qubits double
| waaay slower than transistors so far.
| foobar10000 wrote:
| AES128 / Grover?
| SideQuark wrote:
| They did not make a 17000 qubit computer. The qubits were not
| controllable or general in any way. The paper is linked, look
| at it.
|
| This title is misleading.
| fsh wrote:
| I find the editorialized title misleading. They trapped 17000
| atom pairs in an optical lattice and demonstrated a high-fidelity
| quantum gate between the atoms of each pair in parallel. There is
| no interaction between the atoms of different pairs and no
| individual control. The experiment demonstrates a very robust
| gate scheme, but is a long way from a programmable computer.
| baxtr wrote:
| With the hype QC these days, I find it hard to separate hype
| from real progress.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Reminds me the state of nuclear fusion.
| blitzar wrote:
| Just a decade away now.
| mrroper wrote:
| So just like AI?
| ashirviskas wrote:
| Nah, it's a decade away from *now*.
| blitzar wrote:
| nahhh, definately from *now* though - 100% this time
| dwd wrote:
| Now now or Just now?
|
| * I've worked with too many Sth Africans.
| HenryMulligan wrote:
| For those of us who aren't familiar, what is the
| difference?
| api wrote:
| ... and like fusion it will be a decade away, a decade
| away, a decade away, six months away, then we have it.
|
| The "decade away" phenomenon comes from the fact that
| it's basically impossible to time estimate innovation.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I went to school in Oxfordshire in the '80s. Some
| visiting profs from JET joked that fusion was 25 years
| away then.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Back then things were centered around "can we even do
| this?" and now it's more of "how do we keep this running
| more than 5 minutes?".
| meltyness wrote:
| ... and room temperature superconductors! If only we
| could sort out the feasibility, interdependencies, and
| priorities, but we just don't know, or well, I just don't
| know haha.
| adrianN wrote:
| Fusion is a number of dollars away, not years. It gets
| almost no funding because it'sa science and engineering
| experiment that most likely will not lead to economically
| viable power plants in a market dominated by renewables.
| femto wrote:
| That's progress, if fusion is always only 10 years away
| now! The running joke used to be that it was always 30
| years away.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| That's String Theory providing "answers", no?
| scorpionfeet wrote:
| That's why we have "reading". Literally the first paragraph.
| So in this case, pretty easy to separate.
| functional_dev wrote:
| The ETH article title is actually fine - "a new trick brings
| stability."
|
| The hype is in the HN title.
| ionwake wrote:
| its still more than my nephew managed to achieve this morning
| TheEaterOfSouls wrote:
| I have questions. Is he attempting to build a quantum gate
| array? Seems kind of unfair to compare one person's efforts
| with a well-established university, if so. :P
| progbits wrote:
| ETHZ news page is always overhyped. There is good research
| coming from there but their marketing is never worth reading.
| vasco wrote:
| What is overhyped about: "A new trick brings stability to
| quantum operations". Are people complaining about the HN
| title as if it's the article's title?
| K0balt wrote:
| Yes
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| In case others are confused: the old HN title has been changed,
| and the new HN title is directly from the paper (and definitely
| not overhyped).
|
| Reading the ETHZ article as well as the paper, they both seem
| pretty accurate and descriptive. Really sad HN is not
| discussing the actual cool research that was done, but not
| surprised since physics is outside HN's core competencies.
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "ETH Zurich demonstrates 17,000 qubit array
| with 99.91% fidelity". We've changed it now.
|
| Submitters: " _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) If you want
| to say what you think is important about an article, that's
| fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your
| view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| nottorp wrote:
| Judging by the other comments on here, they learned to title
| their articles from OpenAI and Anthropic.
| hmry wrote:
| The HN title is not the article's title
| aswegs8 wrote:
| BREAKING: ETHZ REFRAINS FROM RELEASING THE DETAILS OF THEIR
| QUBIT EXPERIMENT IN FEAR OF BREAKING THE FABRIC OF REALITY.
| READ NOW!!
| Keyframe wrote:
| And "they" being OP, not ETHZ.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| And ... can it run Crysis?
|
| :-D
| ForgotMyUUID wrote:
| "Demonstrates" vs. "can be applied to 17,000 qubits
| simultaneously." - too completely different things, you know ...
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Not sure what distinction you are trying to make.
|
| The researchers used a 58000 atom system, turned 17000 of them
| into qubits, and applied their gate to all those qubits
| simultaneously.
|
| Are you doubting this? On what grounds? It's stated pretty
| clearly in the paper.
| dathinab wrote:
| things are speeding up dangerously
|
| sure this isn't a 17k qubit quantum computer, but it's a step in
| that direction
|
| and this isn't the only news falling under "this is moving faster
| then expected"
|
| just one in many which scream "time to take it serious, deadline
| 2029 try earlier"
|
| ---
|
| a year or so(?) ago some investments happened, which made only
| sense if there had been some unpublished break through in quantum
| computer hardware (through you never can exclude foolish absurd
| high Risiko investments). (Sadly I didn't bookmark/safe the
| relevant articles/analysis, so take with a grain of salt.)
|
| then more recently, google researchers had some break through
| wrt. quantum algorithms. It can now be generally assumed that 10k
| qubits (in the right setup) are enough to break 256 elliptic
| curve cryptography (or 2048bit RSA) _in minutes_!
|
| There where also other hardware breakthrough published, and error
| correction break throughs etc.
|
| The general consensus of people more knowledgeable in this field
| then me seems to be going in the direction that you must _finish
| fully migrate to post quantum cryptography by 2029_.
|
| Note that this isn't a "100% guarantee there are cable quantum
| computers in 2030", but a "the chance of this happening is too
| high to not be prepared by then".
|
| Also that is mainly true for webpki, TLS, cloud
| infrastructure/deployment systems, code signing, etc.
|
| Overall:
|
| - from a academic/paper background 2029 seems to be the deadline
| to finish migrating to post quantum cryptography
|
| - claudflare agrees and has moved up it's internal deadline to
| 2029
|
| - same for Google, Google also seem to have prioritized quantum
| secure authentication over harvest now/decrypt later protections.
| Which IMHO implies they take that deadline quite serious.
|
| - IBM expect some "moonshot" attacks against high value targets
| already in 2029 (i.e. ~one year earlier) instead of 2030.
|
| ___
|
| Through overall what does that mean for most people?
|
| - If you run some small low security service then probably for
| now nothing much. But make sure you can move to pq if the tooling
| (webpki, TLS, etc.) starts supporting it and keep an eye on the
| topic.
|
| - For webpki, TLS and co having well working and by default
| supported pq cryptography is paramount. This tech isn't just
| powering the secure web, it's used far beyond and if broken might
| be enough to take over large parts of whole cloud providers.
|
| - If you have some very sensitive material, where it's a big
| problem if it leaks even years later, then you have a problem.
| Because you probably should have already migrated to post quantum
| cryptography 1-2 years ago ... Note that symmetric encryption is
| mostly unaffected. Sure there are a lot of people saying it's
| "slashed in half" (e.g. 128bit => 64bit) but luckily that isn't
| fully true. I personally still would go with 256bit where viable,
| as often there is little reason not to do so. BUT a lot of the
| ways of sharing/accessing/deriving that secure symmetric key use
| cryptography which should be assumed to be broken soon.
|
| - for VPNs if they allow complementing the asym. crypto with a
| symmetric key do that now (e.g. wireguard pre-shared key). But
| that is for many use cases a hen/egg issue as how do you securely
| exchange the pre-shared key? So look out for changes in the
| tooling/ecosystem.
|
| - for DevOps, look out for changes in the ecosystem especially
| webpki/TLS/certs and look out for tools which have a high chance
| to not mitigate in time
|
| - for Devs post quantum cryptography often looks like it could
| "just slot in" but that often isn't fully the case due to very
| different key sizes and performance characteristics. Look out for
| it. Also making you system ready to migrate to pq-safety was a
| recommendation by NSA and pretty much any other national cyber
| security agency for years by now. Furthermore with the
| standardization of ML-KEM the recommendation shifted to using
| that where viable (potentially in a hybrid KEM). So if you now
| notice that you never bother to check/plane ahead you probably
| should give it some priority now as you may be found to have
| acted in neglect which could in unlucky cases turn into legal
| liabilities.
| ktallett wrote:
| There are so many steps in quantum computing but there is
| nothing of note to suggest that we can get anywhere near
| building a device that outperforms HPC's at this stage.
| freetonik wrote:
| Every single discussion thread about any announcement in quantum
| feels exactly the same:
|
| 1. this is not what you think it is, there are caveats and the
| title is misleading.
|
| 2. I feel there is so much hype around quantum computing.
|
| 3. It's like nuclear fusion, always 10 years away.
|
| 4. Nuclear fusion is at least practical. QC is not.
|
| 5. Did they manage to find prime factorization of 17 already? LOL
|
| 6. Cryptography will be dead, RIP bitcoin and https.
|
| 7. No, actually quantum computers are useless.
|
| It's tiring.
|
| I recommend this recent post by Scott Aaronson
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9668
| ktallett wrote:
| I am of the view the 17000 is simply referring to once they had
| the system set in the final stage they are happy with. They ran
| 17000 qubits through it over the course of testing and it led to
| a fidelity of 99%. Which is useful as fidelity is important,
| although this still isn't accurate enough, but it is no where
| near programmable general quantum computer.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| They had something like 58000 atoms in their lattice and
| managed to form 17000 qubits from atom pairs.
|
| Pretty impressive already yeah, I'm sure either their team or
| another research team will try to improve the qubit yield.
| Increasing the atom count could be harder though, I'm not an
| expert but at some point you run into limits from the size of
| your lab/cooler/trap.
|
| And yeah 99.9% fidelity is not anything groundbreaking, but
| it's pretty surprising for a "first try" on a new gate
| implementation. In contrast superconducting systems have been
| worked on for years and years with ridiculous amounts of
| investment and also only get 3 nines of fidelity, and IonQ just
| recently demonstrated 4 nines fidelity, but only after working
| on their system for many years too.
| ktallett wrote:
| It will be very challenging to implement their system off
| this paper as there are many key experimental details
| missing. I won't get into my hatred of this but open
| methodology is sorely needed in QC and it really hampers
| speed of development across the whole sector. As you say you
| will run into limitations eventually but again hard to judge
| where those limitations are.
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