[beforeolives]

With IBM's materials I genuinely can't tell how much is real working technology and how much is salesmanship and hype. Can anyone with more expertise comment on the current state of quantum computing and whether any of it is exaggerated?

[rwmj]

IBM and Google are about neck-and-neck with state of the art quantum computers (both 53 qubits, each using fundamentally different technology). So yes, this one is real. However it's all research at the moment, there are no practical applications that aren't better solved on a classical computer.

[Beltiras]

IBM is really good at hyping tech and then finding a mark and squeezing real hard. Just look at how they wrung hospitals for exorbitant amounts of money for Watson. If someone bought an IBM solution they should be fired.

[russtrotter]

Ha, your comment is ironic since I still remember from back in the 70's/80's that "nobody got fired for buying an IBM". The quote might even be older than that, but I had first heard that quote when Microsoft was still on the rise handing IBM their butts in the fledgling PC marketplace.

[Beltiras]

That's what I was going for.

[singularity2001]

The current state of quantum computing is very far from actual applications, since adding more qubits results in higher entropy, incoherence and other disturbing effects. Source: Science 2020