Quantum computers might soon actually be useful, researchers have said after a new breakthrough.

A new study showed that a quantum computer could be used for calculations that are beyond the capabilities of our current best classical – or non-quantum – computers.

It means that the technology could soon be useful in practical applications, the researchers suggest.

For years, quantum computing experts have been hopeful that the technology could allow for entirely new kinds of calculations, which might be useful across battery research, medicines and more. But the current versions are given to a host of problems, including the fact that they are prone to errors.

Quantum computers need to be able to fix those errors more quickly than they accumulate. But even the best quantum computers have struggled to do so, meaning that practical use of the technology has remained beyond our grasp.

New research from IBM showed that those errors could be mitigated, however, and a quantum computer could be used in ways that a classical computer could not. As such, the results “herald further opportunities for quantum processors to emulate physical systems that are far beyond the reach of conventional computers”, scientists away from the research say.

Unlike many other similar breakthroughs – which focus on the extra speed that a quantum computer can provide – this new research focuses on the scale of the computer. Researchers used more 127 qubits, the equivalent of bits on a classical computer, to do research that classical computers do not have enough memory for.

The breakthrough is described in a new paper, ‘Evidence for the use of quantum computing before fault tolerance’, published in Nature today.

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