Engineers have been talking about quantum computing—the ability to do computing on bits that show quantum entanglement and thus can potentially be on and off at the same time—for decades. In recent years, that promise has gotten closer to reality as a result of the development of quantum annealing systems like those manufactured by D-Wave, the general purpose quantum processors being developed by companies such as IBM and Intel, and attempts to create new programming languages designed for quantum computing.

At CES earlier this month, Intel announced it had a system with 49 qubits—or bits that have existed in a quantum state—in a partnership with Netherlands-based Qutech. This new system, called Tangle Lake, is a big step up from just two months ago, when the company announced a 17-qubit system.

But I was more interested to see IBM's display of its quantum computing progress, as the company had recently announced a 50-qubit system, and perhaps more importantly, has some general quantum computing devices that its customers can actually use.

At the show, Jeff Welser, Vice President and Lab Director of the IBM Research Lab at Almaden (near San Jose), presented the quantum computer, and described the basic system. The computer itself is relatively small, but the cooling systems required to make it work are enormous; it actually needs a room full of cooling units, with vacuum pumps and refrigerators with liquid helium to get the temperature down to 10 to 15 millikelvins, which is colder than even outer space (which averages about 3 kelvins).

What's actually available to developers and researchers right now is a 16-qubit version of the machine that is accessible through a website, as well as a 20-qubit version that specific customers can use, including partners such as JSR and Hitachi Metals. These systems are actually housed at IBM's research facility in Yorktown Heights, NY. The 50-qubit version is expected to be available to partners later this year.

It's not only the number of qubits that matters, Welser said, but the amount of time the system is in "coherence" to generate results. In practice, he said, you run the same calculations multiple times and average the results. The combination of the number of qubits, the number of simultaneous entanglements, and the error rate creates the "quantum volume" that is really important for solving problems.

Welser said he believed that with a 50-100 qubit system, users will be able to do things that aren't possible with conventional computers.

Welser said the first real application is likely to be materials analysis using quantum chemistry, and in particular the simulation of different kinds of polymers and new alloys. That's because you can simulate weight, strength, and other properties, which was previously an effort that involved a lot of trial and error.

Other possible applications for systems with limited numbers of qubits include deep learning, because error correction isn't as important.

You often hear about how quantum computing can break many of today's encryption algorithms. Welser acknowledges that may be the case, but said you'd need a million-qubit system to do so, meaning this won't be a real problem for many years. (In the meantime, lots of organizations are working on deploying algorithms that won't be affected; the hope is that these new algorithms will be in place before the quantum computers are ready.)

Quantum computing is not the kind of thing that will impact most organizations for years, but the presentation offered an interesting glimpse into some specific applications that will shortly be possible, as well as a possible future for more general computing.

Here's a poster explaining how the full system works.