Quantum computing update 2

In this update we will be covering the Zuchongzhi-3 from China which arguably out competes its US counterparts, what the UK NCSC has said government and critical national infrastructure should do about post-quantum cryptography and how NVIDIA is manoeuvring to put its business model in the middle of the quantum computing universe.

It has been a little less frenetic over the last couple of months in the Quantum Computing space but that's always the way with new technologies. Advancement come in fits and starts but this update still has some interesting developments.

Zuchongzhi-3

The Zuchongzhi-3 developed by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has 105 qubits and is a clear competitor to US tech firms such as Google, IBM and Microsoft. It’s named after the Chinese astronomer and mathematician Zu Chongzhi. The Zuchongzhi-2 by contrast had 66 qubits in 2020 and appears to have been the first to achieve quantum supremacy.  Quantum supremacy being the ability to solve a problem that no classical computer can complete in a feasible amount of time.

 The Zuchongzhi-3 representing a significant increase and is on a par with Google Willow or even outperforms it. Interestingly Google and the USTC teams are now focusing on error correction to further improve their quantum architectures.

For more information:  Zuchongzhi-3: A 105-Qubit Superconducting Quantum Processor with 10¹⁵ times Speedup in Circuit Sampling-University of Science and Technology of China

UK National Cyber Security Centre Post-Quantum Cryptography

On the 20^th March 2025 the UK NCSC published guidance for the UK’s migration to post-quantum cryptography. The full guidance can be found here: Timeline for PQC migration revealed - NCSC.GOV.UK

Their roadmap has three key steps:

1. A cryptographic register and supported business services by 2028
2. Migration of highest priority systems and services by 2031
3. Migration of all other systems and services by 2035

We would expect most firms to move a lot quicker than this. Taking an inventory and mapping business services should not take three years. It should be noted however that the NCSC’s primary focus is government and CNI or Critical National Infrastructure – these are super tankers that take a lot of time to change direction. Your firm should be much more agile.

We would also recommend firms add a specific threat to their ICT Risk identification and Assessment specifically on quantum computing and how it will impact risk. This will help you think about the mitigation and how you are going to respond in terms of your risk treatment planning.

ICT Service providers should be looking at building PQC into their software.

Nvidia GTC 2025

Also on the 20^th March 2025 NVIDIA hosted the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2025 event. It dedicated a full day of the conference called Quantum day to host industry leaders on the future of quantum computing.

NVIDIA has provided a host of videos on-line from the event which are very informative, educational and insightful. After watching them NVIDIA has positioned its hardware as the classical computing interface to quantum computing by enabling their hardware to work with all major providers of quantum computing. NVIDIA has also developed their own programming environment called Cuda-Q to enable seamless integration. This means you cab learn Cuda-Q to be able to programme and exploit any of the quantum computing hardware available - it's a one stop shop requiring no reskilling or retraining.

This approach and business model will put NVIDIA at the very heart of the future quantum computing revolution.

More details on the event and copies of the presentations can be found here: Quantum Day Conference Sessions | NVIDIA GTC 2025

Conclusion

The news outlets and authors seem to be gearing up with lots of fear and uncertainty being raised around what some even called the quantum apocalypse. We have tried not to mention them until this point because we think they are a little on the sensationalist side and we will leave that to other bloggers.

However, over the next five years we should expect lots of books to be written on this subject and maybe even a few block buster films. Similar to Y2K we expect these events to be overblown and exaggerated to serve the needs of social media.

There will clearly be incidents, there always are, but for now we need to focus on what’s under our control and mitigate the risk. It’s essential to ensure critical infrastructure is upgraded to PQC as recommended by the NCSC and that we don’t leave any aspect of the internet superstructure or front-line services (water, power and food) reliant on legacy cryptography susceptible to cyber-attack.

Getting a PQC game plan

If you are a Chief Operating Officer or Chief Information Officer concerned about Quantum Computing please get in touch to put the foundations in place and start addressing this issue. A Post Quantum Computing world is going to be here sooner than you think!

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