6 ms·

Physicists developing a quantum computer that’s entirely open source

193 points by tzury 8mo ago

GlibMonkeyDeath 8mo ago
Couldn't find any cost estimate, but from https://openquantumdesign.org/the-quantum-computer https://openquantumdesign.org/the-quantum-computer (scroll down to "What's Inside") I'm guessing 100's of k$ for the bill of materials (let alone keeping the thing going.) So the "you" in "your own" has to have pretty deep pockets...for a relatively low fidelity 30 qubit device.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- nanobuilds 8mo ago
  Okay so not a weekend project.
- spaqin 8mo ago
  Most of the cost is in overpriced laser systems; if that gets solved a trapped-ion system could be reproduced for few tens of thousands of USDs. Still not a hobby weekend project, but certainly more attainable for more universities.
  - Aboutplants 8mo ago
    I was gonna say, at that price the cost in a University setting would be nothing in terms of the experience and teaching/learning opportunities provided. Game changer in terms of scaling education which bodes well for the future
- TurdF3rguson 8mo ago
  > So the "you" in "your own" has to have pretty deep pockets...for a relatively low fidelity 30 qubit device. Sure but once you buy it, all the "you"s in all the other universes get to have one too.
  - roarcher 8mo ago
    And yet they won't split the bill with me. Bunch of freeloaders.
    - bleudeballe 8mo ago
      Banking Company LLC presents: Quantum Loans™ "Your money is simultaneously yours and ours until you check your balance." Superposition Financing: Your loan exists in all possible amounts until observed. Checking your balance collapses the wavefunction — so we recommend you simply... don't. Ignorance isn't just bliss, it's financially optimal. Multiverse Co-signing: Split the debt across all versions of yourself in the multiverse. Sure, some of you will default — but statistically, infinite yous means infinite revenue for us. Entangled Interest Rates: Your rate is entangled with a partner borrower chosen at random. If they pay on time, your rate drops. Payment Clusters: Forget monthly installments. Payments arrive in probabilistic clusters — sometimes three in a week, sometimes none for a year. We can't predict when, and neither can you. It's not a bug, it's quantum mechanics.
      - devnonymous 8mo ago
        The real joke here is how close these quips are to the reality of modern day financial markets. Specifically, lending and hedging, are time entangled and value within the markets exist in superposition.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
ion_trapper 8mo ago
This effort is likely aimed at industrial/academic entities and not "you" as in a single person. But anyway, it needs to be emphasized that the phrase "quantum computer" is today used to mean anything ranging from -a useless machine that produces a signal indistinguishable from noise TO -a highly sophisticated marvel of science and engineering that performs otherwise impossible calculations Many industrial quantum computers today fall closer to the the former category than the latter. A single person or small team with minimal funding has basically no hope of building anything meaningful. I don't know of any other device that has such a broad range of quality represented under one name. Maybe like calling ELIZA and Opus 4.6 both "AI".
- cwillu 8mo ago
  All “industrial” quantum computers currently fall entirely in the former category. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is selling snake oil.
  - ion_trapper 8mo ago
    Is there a QC out there that can perform a commercially useful computation? No, not yet. And yes snake oil is abound. But the reality is not two categories, it's a spectrum. Some are more useless than others.
    - cwillu 8mo ago
      No, it's not a spectrum in any meaningful sense. There are scam companies (some with semi-respectable research departments attached to them) and there are research projects. Anyone selling devices with the promise that those devices will do anything useful for their customers are simply lying. It's like fusion energy: there are legitimate companies working on the problem, and they may even succeed at some point, but anyone willing to deliver a 1MW fusion plant tomorrow is scamming you, because the technology doesn't work yet.
      - ottah 8mo ago
        I have far more faith that fusion someday might be useful than I do for quantum computing.
g42gregory 8mo ago
Do we have an example of a real quantum computer doing some kind of a computation that is not easily accessible by the regular computer? I keep hearing about "the promise" and "achieving quantum supremacy" (again!), but is there a real example of a quantum machine doing something useful in real life?
- ion_trapper 8mo ago
  The Venn diagram of "useful" and "not possible on a classical computer" has demonstrations on both disjoint ends but is currently empty in the intersection. For now. I fully sympathize with the hype-fatigue though.
  - moi2388 8mo ago
    What about Schor’s algorithm?
    - scheme271 8mo ago
      That's on the useful end but I don't think any QC has gone beyond being able to factor 14 or something in that neighborhood. Realistically we'd need a few thousand qubits to factor anything that's reasonable and current QCs have a dozen or so qubits that work.
      - vrighter 8mo ago
        no QC has gone beyond being able to factor 1. The "factorization" done with quantum computers involved cherry picking special numbers so that a special "compiled" circuit (knowledge of the answer is required in order to do this) can be used instead of the full thing. That makes the semantics of the executed program "slightly" different. What the claims say: factor(a,b) What the implementation does: println("3").
        scheme271 8mo ago
        Oh, I didn't realize that. I knew it was limited but not that limited. That's pretty misleading.
dr_dshiv 8mo ago
If you want to try quantum vibecoding, I threw up a site at https://www.haiqu.org https://www.haiqu.org where you can mcp with the quantum computer at TU Delft. Free, after you make an account.
infinitewalk 8mo ago
For those interested in the compiler/software stack and control hardware: https://pennylane.ai/blog/2025/12/open-source-quantum-computing-pennyLane-catalyst-open-quantum-design https://pennylane.ai/blog/2025/12/open-source-quantum-comput...
lkm0 8mo ago
Incredibly cool initiative! Looks like they're going for a trapped-ion device, which the best you can get for now. It's not clear what kind of geometry the ions will be on, but I assume linear traps? If so, it can't be scaled beyond 10ish qubits, so that's definitely more of an educational project. That makes sense though, since the other options like racetrack or whatever are still active research. I wonder if there's ever been any cross-pollinating between SC and trapped-ion labs when it comes to control electronics and such. This could be a good way to find out.
kitd 8mo ago
> But unlike commercial ventures, the plan is to give away all the intellectual property I would prefer the term "share". "Give away" implies a single, proprietary enterprise could acquire and control it, which isn't "open source".
ModernMech 8mo ago
Only if you look at the license. Before that, it's in a superposition state of being closed and open sourced.
teunispeters 8mo ago
Better to link the hosting site - https://openquantumdesign.org/ https://openquantumdesign.org/ - or maybe its githubs - https://github.com/OpenQuantumDesign https://github.com/OpenQuantumDesign too.

193 points by tzury 8mo ago

Couldn't find any cost estimate, but from https://openquantumdesign.org/the-quantum-computer https://openquantumdesign.org/the-quantum-computer (scroll down to "What's Inside") I'm guessing 100's of k$ for the bill of materials (let alone keeping the thing going.) So the "you" in "your own" has to have pretty deep pockets...for a relatively low fidelity 30 qubit device.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
nanobuilds 8mo ago
Okay so not a weekend project.
spaqin 8mo ago
Most of the cost is in overpriced laser systems; if that gets solved a trapped-ion system could be reproduced for few tens of thousands of USDs. Still not a hobby weekend project, but certainly more attainable for more universities.
- Aboutplants 8mo ago
  I was gonna say, at that price the cost in a University setting would be nothing in terms of the experience and teaching/learning opportunities provided. Game changer in terms of scaling education which bodes well for the future
TurdF3rguson 8mo ago
> So the "you" in "your own" has to have pretty deep pockets...for a relatively low fidelity 30 qubit device. Sure but once you buy it, all the "you"s in all the other universes get to have one too.
- roarcher 8mo ago
  And yet they won't split the bill with me. Bunch of freeloaders.
  - bleudeballe 8mo ago
    Banking Company LLC presents: Quantum Loans™ "Your money is simultaneously yours and ours until you check your balance." Superposition Financing: Your loan exists in all possible amounts until observed. Checking your balance collapses the wavefunction — so we recommend you simply... don't. Ignorance isn't just bliss, it's financially optimal. Multiverse Co-signing: Split the debt across all versions of yourself in the multiverse. Sure, some of you will default — but statistically, infinite yous means infinite revenue for us. Entangled Interest Rates: Your rate is entangled with a partner borrower chosen at random. If they pay on time, your rate drops. Payment Clusters: Forget monthly installments. Payments arrive in probabilistic clusters — sometimes three in a week, sometimes none for a year. We can't predict when, and neither can you. It's not a bug, it's quantum mechanics.
    - devnonymous 8mo ago
      The real joke here is how close these quips are to the reality of modern day financial markets. Specifically, lending and hedging, are time entangled and value within the markets exist in superposition.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

ion_trapper 8mo ago

This effort is likely aimed at industrial/academic entities and not "you" as in a single person. But anyway, it needs to be emphasized that the phrase "quantum computer" is today used to mean anything ranging from -a useless machine that produces a signal indistinguishable from noise TO -a highly sophisticated marvel of science and engineering that performs otherwise impossible calculations Many industrial quantum computers today fall closer to the the former category than the latter. A single person or small team with minimal funding has basically no hope of building anything meaningful. I don't know of any other device that has such a broad range of quality represented under one name. Maybe like calling ELIZA and Opus 4.6 both "AI".

cwillu 8mo ago
All “industrial” quantum computers currently fall entirely in the former category. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is selling snake oil.
- ion_trapper 8mo ago
  Is there a QC out there that can perform a commercially useful computation? No, not yet. And yes snake oil is abound. But the reality is not two categories, it's a spectrum. Some are more useless than others.
  - cwillu 8mo ago
    No, it's not a spectrum in any meaningful sense. There are scam companies (some with semi-respectable research departments attached to them) and there are research projects. Anyone selling devices with the promise that those devices will do anything useful for their customers are simply lying. It's like fusion energy: there are legitimate companies working on the problem, and they may even succeed at some point, but anyone willing to deliver a 1MW fusion plant tomorrow is scamming you, because the technology doesn't work yet.
    - ottah 8mo ago
      I have far more faith that fusion someday might be useful than I do for quantum computing.

g42gregory 8mo ago

Do we have an example of a real quantum computer doing some kind of a computation that is not easily accessible by the regular computer? I keep hearing about "the promise" and "achieving quantum supremacy" (again!), but is there a real example of a quantum machine doing something useful in real life?

ion_trapper 8mo ago
The Venn diagram of "useful" and "not possible on a classical computer" has demonstrations on both disjoint ends but is currently empty in the intersection. For now. I fully sympathize with the hype-fatigue though.
- moi2388 8mo ago
  What about Schor’s algorithm?
  - scheme271 8mo ago
    That's on the useful end but I don't think any QC has gone beyond being able to factor 14 or something in that neighborhood. Realistically we'd need a few thousand qubits to factor anything that's reasonable and current QCs have a dozen or so qubits that work.
    - vrighter 8mo ago
      no QC has gone beyond being able to factor 1. The "factorization" done with quantum computers involved cherry picking special numbers so that a special "compiled" circuit (knowledge of the answer is required in order to do this) can be used instead of the full thing. That makes the semantics of the executed program "slightly" different. What the claims say: factor(a,b) What the implementation does: println("3").
      - scheme271 8mo ago
        Oh, I didn't realize that. I knew it was limited but not that limited. That's pretty misleading.

dr_dshiv 8mo ago

If you want to try quantum vibecoding, I threw up a site at https://www.haiqu.org https://www.haiqu.org where you can mcp with the quantum computer at TU Delft. Free, after you make an account.

infinitewalk 8mo ago

For those interested in the compiler/software stack and control hardware: https://pennylane.ai/blog/2025/12/open-source-quantum-computing-pennyLane-catalyst-open-quantum-design https://pennylane.ai/blog/2025/12/open-source-quantum-comput...

lkm0 8mo ago

Incredibly cool initiative! Looks like they're going for a trapped-ion device, which the best you can get for now. It's not clear what kind of geometry the ions will be on, but I assume linear traps? If so, it can't be scaled beyond 10ish qubits, so that's definitely more of an educational project. That makes sense though, since the other options like racetrack or whatever are still active research. I wonder if there's ever been any cross-pollinating between SC and trapped-ion labs when it comes to control electronics and such. This could be a good way to find out.

kitd 8mo ago

> But unlike commercial ventures, the plan is to give away all the intellectual property I would prefer the term "share". "Give away" implies a single, proprietary enterprise could acquire and control it, which isn't "open source".

ModernMech 8mo ago

Only if you look at the license. Before that, it's in a superposition state of being closed and open sourced.

teunispeters 8mo ago

Better to link the hosting site - https://openquantumdesign.org/ https://openquantumdesign.org/ - or maybe its githubs - https://github.com/OpenQuantumDesign https://github.com/OpenQuantumDesign too.