They work at room temperature, undercutting and outperforming today's huge, cryo-cooled quantum supercomputers, and soon they'll be small enough for mobile devices.

Superconducting quantum computers are huge and incredibly finicky machines at this point. They need to be isolated from anything that might knock an electron's spin off and ruin a calculation. That includes mechanical isolation, in extreme vacuum chambers, where only a few molecules might remain in a cubic meter or two of space. It includes electromagnetic forces – IBM, for example, surrounds its precious quantum bits, or qubits, with mu metals to absorb all magnetic fields.

They work at room temperature, undercutting and outperforming today's huge, cryo-cooled quantum supercomputers, and soon they'll be small enough for mobile devices.

Superconducting quantum computers are huge and incredibly finicky machines at this point. They need to be isolated from anything that might knock an electron's spin off and ruin a calculation. That includes mechanical isolation, in extreme vacuum chambers, where only a few molecules might remain in a cubic meter or two of space. It includes electromagnetic forces – IBM, for example, surrounds its precious quantum bits, or qubits, with mu metals to absorb all magnetic fields.