Quote:
Originally Posted by OrdoSeclorum
With UIUC, perhaps a new technology institute, Argonne, Fermi, and Chicago all being supercomputing and quantum computing powerhouses, there's a real chance that some startup will form here and get sold for parts before it's big enough. Or that talent will ripen and fall off the quantum computing tree and just about every piece of fruit will get delivered to San Jose.
I'm not sure what else Chicago should do, working on being livable and business friendly.
On the other hand, it's possible that quantum computing will become very important very fast while also being weird enough that organizations will need to remain close to the innovation centers producing these specific talents. If that's the case, there's a chance that enough enough clustering could happen early that would make Chicago hard to displace. I wouldn't bet a ton of money on it, but it's not so unlikely as to be a pipe dream.
|
At the end of the day, I think the important thing to do is understand what quantum computing is and what it is not, and why it is different than today. As well as the issues facing quantum computing even before it can be made consumer friendly. I did a little of that but there's many resources out there. It's a new paradigm completely and I believe that a lot of people who just read pop science articles do not understand this, and are having the wrong idea completely. It's a long road ahead, but a potentially exciting one.
If you think back to why Silicon Valley "formed" a long time ago, it's not necessarily because people wanted to be there because of the livability, weather, etc. It is because there was some engineering talent there already, but first and foremost the companies formed near the major research institutions. A lot of companies were formed directly out of universities like Stanford or alumni still nearby. People were focused on making things work, not making boat loads of money. That followed a bit later.
If researchers can have various breakthroughs in this field and eventually over the years have enough breakthroughs to make it something you and I could have in our homes for cheap, then that will come too. I highly doubt that's going to be in the next 15 years though. My guess is sometime in the mid 2030s or 2040s, but we'll see. By that time, again if the breakthroughs happen, then who knows. Google has already claimed quantum supremacy which is great on paper and great for a lot of things, but solving some of the issues like quantum error correction would have been 100X more impressive IMO. IBM claims they will have something within a year or two on the error correction front which I'm excited to see, especially considering people have predicted it taking 100-200 qubits to even pull off. By comparison, Google's Sycamore is 54 Qubits and IBM's is 53.
Bay Area is poised to be a major player because of Google and some national labs obviously and Chicago has a ton going for it too with national labs and universities. I think Bay Area, Chicago, and NYC area are poised to become the leaders in this in the US, as they already are.
Say this happens in 20 years, who knows how investors will be and what state we'll be in. It's pretty far in the future. I think again people need to get a reality check and understand how far of a road is ahead before we can start talking about VCs funding companies for this. Maybe in the next decade for more industrial applications but still a long ways off before we hit the stage where it is available to normal people like us.
Prev
Linear Mode
