D-Wave Quantum Inc. announced a new gate-model quantum computing roadmap aimed at advancing commercial fault-tolerant quantum computing. The company said its plan targets a 100-logical-qubit system capable of successfully performing more than one million operations by 2032, leveraging its superconducting dual-rail architecture and quantum error correction technologies.
The roadmap builds on D-Wave’s experience developing superconducting quantum systems and is designed to complement the company’s existing annealing quantum computing platform. D-Wave believes its approach differs from many competitors by focusing on reducing errors directly at the hardware level rather than primarily increasing physical qubit counts.
According to the company, its dual-rail qubit architecture incorporates error detection directly into qubits, allowing approximately 90% of errors to be identified during computation at the single-qubit level. D-Wave also said it has demonstrated 99.9% two-qubit fidelities with error detection, meaning physical errors occur roughly once every 1,000 operations.
The company outlined a series of milestones intended to advance toward fault-tolerant quantum computing:
- 2026: Delivery of a 17-physical-qubit system supporting logical error rates two times lower than physical error rates.
- 2027: Completion of a 49-physical-qubit system expected to deliver a 20-fold reduction in error rates.
- 2028: Completion of a 181-physical-qubit system expected to provide a 2,000-fold reduction in error rates and serve as a scalable blueprint for fault-tolerant architectures.
- 2030: Completion of a 10-logical-qubit system capable of supporting the first fault-tolerant algorithms.
- 2032: Completion of a 100-logical-qubit system capable of performing more than one million successful operations and supporting initial quantum chemistry and quantum AI applications.
D-Wave said its superconducting technology can run quantum error correction cycles 100 to 1,000 times faster than neutral atom or trapped ion systems. The company also highlighted Lambda, a metric used to measure how effectively error correction reduces errors, as a key benchmark for fault-tolerant quantum computing progress.
According to D-Wave, the broader quantum computing industry has demonstrated Lambda values around 2, while its roadmap targets a Lambda value of 10. The company believes this would allow errors to be reduced significantly faster and enable fault-tolerant systems to be built with fewer physical qubits.
D-Wave noted that the roadmap is supported by its proprietary on-chip cryogenic control technology, quantum cloud infrastructure, and more than 15 years of experience building superconducting quantum computing systems. The company has delivered six generations of annealing quantum computers, including its latest Advantage2 system.
As a provider of both annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies, D-Wave said it is uniquely positioned to address opportunities across the broader quantum computing market.
KEY QUOTE:
“The industry has spent years talking about fault tolerance. We believe D-Wave has a highly differentiated and credible path to achieving it. Our superconducting dual-rail architecture is a fundamentally different approach to fault-tolerant quantum computing that we expect will position D-Wave not only to compete, but also to redefine how quickly the technology becomes commercial.”
Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO, D-Wave Quantum Inc.
