Quantum supremacy chase: India in select country club

New Delhi: India has joined a select few countries that chase “Quantum Supremacy” with a 8,000-crore national mission to crack into the next-generation technology, which promises exponential ‘compute’ power and to rewrite the rules of present-day computing.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST), which is drafting the contours of the mission to be detailed in a month, is looking to build a homegrown 50 Qubit ‘Quantum Computer’ in 4-5 years as part of the mission, which will also include building solutions for quantum communications, storage and encryption, a government official told ET.

Once proven, the disruptive technology – still under works at labs in the United States, Russia, China and India – could be used to hack into any cyber security system in a matter of seconds, making it a strategic need for countries.