Researchers from QuEra Computing, Harvard University, and MIT published their findings on the arXiv website, a repository of preliminary scientific papers. In this study, 2,304 physical qubits were converted to 1,156 logical qubits, demonstrating a quantum coding rate of over 50%.
This efficiency allows Attack ciphers and encryption schemes Things like Bitcoin and those that protect digital systems.
Physical qubits, the basic processing units of quantum computers, are fragile and always prone to errors. The solution is to group several of these physical qubits together so that they can “watch” each other and modify each other. That set is called a logical qubit.
Historically, the problem is that The amount of physical components that need to be “sacrificed” to integrate a single logical qubit In operation. Higher encoding rates optimize hardware to achieve the same processing power with significantly less physical infrastructure.
According to the new paper Shared on April 17, researchers have identified a new structural condition. Allows coding rates greater than 50% With hardware based on neutral atoms (a type of quantum processor that uses individual atoms suspended in a vacuum and controlled by lasers to store and process information).
According to research from QuEra Computing, Harvard University, and MIT, previous industry benchmarks assumed a ratio of approximately 30%, but the study found that this was significantly higher, although the results are preliminary and have not been peer-reviewed.
Impact on Bitcoin Cryptocurrency
The Qtonic Quantum team, a company in the field, pointed out in its X account that previous research by the Caltech Research Institute estimated that running the Shor algorithm to crack an elliptic curve or ECC scheme (the cipher that builds Bitcoin’s security) requires about 12,000 physical qubits and a 30% coding rate.
Thinking about something new paperAchieving a 50% ratio would lower the threshold for physical qubits to defeat Bitcoin, but Qtonic did not specify the number. “The lower limit of qubits for quantum computers related to cryptography continues to fall.”said the company.
Within the ECC family, Bitcoin encryption is based on a system called ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm), which protects the private keys that users use to authenticate transactions. This scheme is estimated to be potentially vulnerable to sufficiently powerful quantum computers, although estimates of when this will be possible vary widely.
this new paper This joins a series of recent advances compressing that space. As reported by CriptoNoticias, Google Quantum AI has released a report that says it will reduce the amount of quantum hardware needed to achieve useful quantum computing. Up to 20 times.
Similarly, Quantinuum has revealed in research that it has achieved a 2:1 ratio in building logical qubits from physical qubits, a record that has never been achieved before.
None of these advances indicate that “Q-Day,” the day when quantum computers can compromise current systems, is imminent, but the trend is consistent. paper Definitely lower the threshold.
