This type of cal­cu­la­tion will allow for more gen­er­al quan­tum algo­rithms in the short term, before tru­ly fault-tol­er­ant quan­tum com­put­ers become available.
The researchers used a tech­nique called “noisy inter­me­di­ate-scale (NISQ) quan­tum com­pu­ta­tion” in which the cal­cu­la­tion is per­formed rapid­ly to avoid the accu­mu­la­tion of errors1. This type of cal­cu­la­tion will allow for more gen­er­al quan­tum algo­rithms in the short term, before tru­ly fault-tol­er­ant quan­tum com­put­ers become available.