An IBM research chief said that once quantum computers enter practical use, they will be able to carry out calculations that cannot be handled even by linking conventional supercomputers on a large scale.

On Oct. 1 local time, IT outlet TechRadar reported that IBM Senior Vice President and research chief Dario Gil (다리오 길) appeared on CBS program "60 Minutes" to explain the changes and limitations that useful quantum computers could bring.

Gil stressed most the way quantum computers scale computation. He said of calculations future quantum computers could perform, "You can’t do it even if you connect 1 million or 1 billion supercomputers." He said that while conventional computing expands what it can process by scaling hardware, quantum computers have a different structure, allowing computing power to grow on a different trajectory.

He also said the concept of "quantum advantage" is not easy to grasp intuitively. As the number of qubits rises from just a few to thousands and tens of thousands, performance grows not linearly but exponentially. IBM believes that because a quantum computer’s capabilities expand sharply as more qubits are added, it could someday perform tasks that are difficult even to conceptualise within today’s computing framework.

IBM also said the quantum-computing era will not open through hardware advancement alone. Gil said quantum computing amounts to a "paradigm shift," but building powerful equipment is not enough. The scientific community must also define which problems this machine should solve. That means that even if a quantum computer’s performance grows, practical adoption could be limited if tasks that can be used immediately in industrial settings are not organised.

Against that backdrop, IBM and other companies are already providing corporate customers access to quantum computers through the cloud. At the current stage, use is focused on early pilot projects, development of proprietary algorithms and preparing systems tailored to future hardware. The emphasis is on learning and advance adaptation rather than expanding commercial services.

In the automotive industry, research related to electric-vehicle batteries was presented as a representative example. Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are working with the IBM Quantum Network to simulate chemical reactions inside electric-vehicle battery cells. Quantum computing is not yet spreading to the general-purpose market, but the work shows that in some industries experiments are already under way targeting problems that are difficult to handle with conventional computing.

Quantum computing has drawn relatively less attention recently as artificial intelligence dominates the tech industry’s conversation, but there are also views that its practical timing could be brought forward by key technological advances in recent years. Competition is expected to focus less on showcasing raw computing performance and more on qubit scalability, error control and how quickly firms can identify problems tied to real industrial demand.