In early March 2020, Honeywell International joined the race to create a quantum computer. The company is preparing to release the most powerful system in the world.
The manufacturer of industrial equipment for the aerospace sector says its quantum computer will double the performance of the most powerful quantum machine available today. Their new system will have 64 cubic meters, while the fastest quantum computer built by IBM will have 32 cubic meters.
Whilst it's good that more companies are getting involved, I'm extremely skeptical of Honeywell's claim. Their assessment is based on the assumption that Quantum Volume is the defining metric for QC power, and that's very much open to question. Quantum Volume is the metric that IBM uses:
Quantum Volume (QV) is a hardware-agnostic metric that we defined to measure the performance of a real quantum computer. Each system we develop brings us along a path where complex problems will be more efficiently addressed by quantum computing; therefore, the need for system benchmarks is crucial, and simply counting qubits is not enough. As we have discussed in the past, Quantum Volume takes into account the number of qubits, connectivity, and gate and measurement errors. Material improvements to underlying physical hardware, such as increases in coherence times, reduction of device crosstalk, and software circuit compiler efficiency, can point to measurable progress in Quantum Volume, as long as all improvements happen at a similar pace.
The thing is... absolutely no-one else uses that metric. IBMs QC is currently the most powerful in the world, based on Quantum Volume, because
it is the only one that uses Quantum Volume as a metric.It looks like Honeywell are trying to put out a QC that is more powerful than IBM's, using Quantum Volume to determine that power... thereby becoming the "most powerful" QC in the world by improving on its only competitor on that metric.
It is great that another company is entering the space, and it will certainly be a big achievement if newcomers Honeywell can out-perform IBM... I just think that the "most powerful" claim is a little misleading.