Oratomic co-founder and CEO Dolev Bluvstein, a visiting associate in physics at Caltech, said advances in quantum computing are accelerating the timeline for practical machines and increasing pressure to migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography.
“People are used to quantum computers always being 10 years away,” Bluvstein told Decrypt. “But when you look at where we were a little over ten years ago, the best estimates of what would be required for Shor’s algorithm were one billion qubits at a time when the best systems we had in the lab were roughly five qubits.”
Bluvstein noted that current lab systems are already approaching—and in some cases exceeding—6,000 physical qubits. In other words, the cryptography risk may be much sooner than experts previously expected.
“You can really see the system size and controllability increasing over time as the required system size goes down,” he said.
The threat has prompted governments and technology firms to begin migrating to post-quantum cryptography, or encryption designed to withstand quantum attacks. Researchers, however, caution that major engineering challenges remain, including scaling quantum systems while maintaining extremely low error rates.
“Just having 10,000 physical qubits is something that could happen within a year,” Bluvstein said. “But that's really not the goalpost people think it is. It’s not like when you design a computer, you just put the transistors on the chip, wash your hands, and say you’re done. It’s a highly non-trivial, extremely complicated task to actually go and build one of these.”
Despite this, Bluvstein said a practical quantum computer could emerge before the end of the decade.
“I think the whole world’s digital infrastructure. It’s not just blockchain. It’s internet of things devices, internet communication, routers, satellites,” he said. “It spans the entire global digital infrastructure, and it’s complicated.”
