The neutral-atom scaling problem

2:01:59>> how many atoms can I can I put in my array? >> Yeah, >> that's the idea, right? Um, you can take a singular electron beam and split it up into a bunch of optical tweezers >> and then that's normally what we see when we saw that like grid of of atoms. That's really a single electron beam. I mean, sorry, single laser beam that you're splitting into a bunch of optical tweezers, a bunch of tractor beams, and then each of the atoms are in that. Um, one of the problems though, there's two problems really with this. One is there's a laser power wall. Like how powerful can you make your laser? All right, you've got a thousand, >> right? Can you like 10x your laser power? >> If you 10x your laser power, um can you not impart heat >> right

2:02:40>> into the system? And two, if you 10x your laser power, but the laser has some noise because the laser is not magically tuned to some frequency, right? There's a jitter in the frequency. And that frequency noise is going to be correlated across all of your beam splitters, right? Each of the atoms is going to be receiving the same noise because it's coming from the same laser. And crucially for a lot of the error detection error um detection algorithms that for the fall tolerant computing that relies on uncorrelated noise, the assumption that the noise on all of these cubits is uncorrelated. >> Ah, that's a good point. So if it's all correlated because it's coming from the same source, >> same source, then like you know

2:03:20>> that's good >> might might be a problem. >> Yeah. >> Right. Um there was also this really nice um paper that came out in March 2026 that said that with just 10,000 quantum quantum bits, you might crack inherent encryption schemes. This is um >> internet internet internet encryption schemes. >> Yeah, internet encryption schemes. But also Bitcoin is going to go to zero. It's going to get your crypto wallets, everything. the whole as as headlines tend to. >> Yeah. This was out of Harvard, Caltech and Cera. Um, naturally, the tech lost the the press lost lost its mind. Um, but yet mathematically, let's go into the paper. They've got a little figure that shows you the space-time trade-off.

2:04:01You're shuttling the atoms, and that's mechanically slow in order to do the error correction and things like that. um even if you've got a 10,000 cubit array um it's going to take you a really really long time. Okay, under if if you've got a 100,000 physical cubits even then with mathematically optimal assumptions it's going to take you about 3 months to crack RSA >> RSA. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> With 10,000 it goes into like years >> which is again not fine. Your computer isn't that big. >> Right. >> Right. >> But you're it's taking a year now.

2:04:43>> Yeah. Yeah. And this goes back to the same issue we had to trap ions. >> Yeah. which is this this this cycle time is still uh you know in my head again as someone who doesn't live in this space all I keep hearing is like this will allow us to do what you couldn't do in the entirety of the existence of the universe >> in the snap of Thanos's finger. Yeah. >> So that's that's where my expectation level is around around time efficiency specifically independent of all the other details. Exactly. And so when I hear it's still going to take I thought this was going to be instant. As soon as it's done RSA will just be over. Everyone can be hacked immediately. >> No, I mean those those headlines would

2:05:25have would have made you think that, right? >> But you go into the figures and it's like no, it'll still take a year. >> Yeah. Yeah. Which again not it's not not a year. >> It's not not a year, but also that means no one's targeting me, >> right? No one has like the one quantum computer and they're targeting my wallet. >> It's it basically only gets critical infrastructure. >> Yeah. >> Except it becomes like a war thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. Right. And and no one's going to use this to to to find the next room temperature superconductor, >> right? Which is not which is what we want to do. >> No, that's the whole point, >> right? And not just targeted for weapons systems please. >> So So now we do the final verdict on neutral atoms. Um cubid quality, I give it a negative 1,000. >> Okay. >> Out of 10. >> Yes. >> Uh cubic control, negative 1,000 out of

2:06:0710. and uh sustainability and economics. Another 1,000 out of 10 for a total of -3,000 out of 30. Um I think this is fair. I think this is a totally fair uh again the the metrics are proprietary FFP uh proprietary IP >> uh for all the neutrals community. I could never have thought um you know since that night at Alice and Bob [laughter] that neutral atoms would end up at -3,000 out of 30, but I that's how the cookie crumbles. [sighs] So what can you do? >> This is where we started and and [clears throat] it's just not it's not

2:06:48good. >> Yeah, it's just not good. >> And you can complain about it in the comments, >> but there's just nothing you can do about it. And so we've we've now covered all of the top contenders but for the star of the show. So we we started at super uh no we didn't start we started yeah superconducting uh cubits then we went to trapped ions then we went to neutral atoms. the worst. >> Yeah. Of the worst. Negative 3,000. Negative3,000. Right. >> And all of them we now have a very fundamental understanding of how they work across our three criteria. >> Yeah. >> Which is cubit quality, cubit control, and scalability and economics, which I

2:07:29think are is a threeaxis system that is really relevant to really try to understand >> what when we're talking about building a quantum computer, what actually matters. And from our part one, we have fundamentals of understanding all of the different weirdness that goes into the quantum mechanics and quantum algorithms and cubit state 01 but with the phase and then the north south. So we now are going to get to the most important part of this two-part series which is going to be an explanation