Researchers Propose QUOPS Score to Rate Quantum Computer Usefulness
Timothy Proctor at Sandia National Laboratories in California and his colleagues have introduced a new metric called the QUOPS score (quantum universal operation performance system) to assess the usefulness of quantum computers. This score reflects the number of physical qubits a quantum computer possesses and the computational operations it can execute. The QUOPS score can then be compared against the score required by a specific algorithm to determine if the quantum computer is capable of running that computation. If the algorithm's score is higher than the computer's, the computation will not work. The team calculated QUOPS scores for quantum computers from Google, IBM, and Quantinuum, finding that none surpassed 2000. Complex computations, such as understanding the FeMoco molecule or breaking prevalent cryptography methods, would require scores over 100,000 times larger. They also tested Quantinuum’s Helios-1 in a fault-tolerant configuration, which achieved a QUOPS score of approximately 40. The resea...
