Simone Severini studied philosophy in Florence then left Italy and never came back. Before becoming director of quantum computing at Amazon Web Services he was in Bristol where he received a PhD in quantum computing, then taught in Canada, China, London and Cambridge.
“I have seen quantum computing leave the academy to become startups like Cambridge Quantum Computing, now Quantinuum, after merging with Honeywell’s quantum hardware division, then Phasecraft and Rahko, founded by my PhD students, and recently acquired. from Odyssey Therapeutics », he tells Il Sole 24 Ore.
“But if you ask me when the quantum computer will have a commercial impact, I’ll tell you right away that no one knows. The only certainty we have is that unlike today’s computers governed by Newtonian physics, those quantum machines will be machines capable of solving problems that we have never set ourselves. Think of a telescope and what it allowed us to know ».
In reality, it has been since the 1980s that scientists have been trying their hand at the development of the quantum computer, which to date is the furthest and most heralded revolution ever. Two years ago Google had claimed in a study that it had achieved quantum supremacy which is the ability of a quantum processor to solve a calculation that a traditional computer would complete in years or in any case in an unreasonable time.
IBM, which on this ground is in the running for supremacy with much of the Big tech that matters in the world (public and private) has responded by publishing a study in which the conclusions of the Mountain View researchers are denied.