A thousand qubits in bloom, now let’s scale

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Standardization is the way to the first quantum computer.  

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Authored by: Nicole Heidel, director of SRI’s Advanced Sciences Lab

Researchers, startups, and large companies are pursuing multiple strategies. Right now, differentiation means proprietary qubits, bespoke hardware, and highly engineered systems. Numerous novel approaches to quantum computing, sensing, and networking are being tested, evaluated, and pushed to the limits. It’s a great time to be a quantum scientist. 

As the quantum industry lets a thousand flowers bloom, it needs to recognize a pragmatic reality: For quantum innovation to become cost-effective, useful, and scalable, we need standards. 

To serve enterprise customers, government agencies, and scientific applications in the real world, we need more than beautiful physics. We need manufacturable systems, standardized parts, interoperability, shared component specifications, and strong relationships with foundries and suppliers capable of producing the building blocks for tomorrow’s quantum.  

Standardization is one of the priorities of the SRI-managed Quantum Economic Development Consortium, which supports and accelerates the quantum industry. The absence of quantum standards is a challenge in SRI’s own quantum research and with collaborators. It’s increasingly clear that the ecosystem would benefit from shared standards, which will make hardware less expensive, engineering more straightforward, and industry collaborations more effective.   

Now that the commercial footprint of the quantum industry is becoming well established, it’s time to build the shared foundation to hyperscale.  

The next quantum challenge is integration 

The quantum industry has made progress by pushing distinct technical approaches. Superconducting qubits, trapped ions, neutral atoms, photonics, and diamond defects all remain in play. Each has passionate advocates and technical promise. Each also comes with its own specialized ecosystem of lasers, detectors, cryogenics, electronics, materials, controls, packaging, and manufacturing constraints. 

That heterogeneity is part of what makes quantum research so exciting, but it also makes promising approaches difficult to scale. 

A classical computer benefits from decades of convergence around standard architectures, interfaces, buses, materials, and manufacturing processes. The computing industry ultimately coalesced around silicon, but early work spanned many materials. The first transistor was made at Bell Labs out of germanium. And at SRI, one early research project used magnetic ferrite memory cores to build a computer that relied on all-magnetic logic. Silicon won not because it’s the world’s best semiconductor, but because it’s reliable, widely available, and amenable to the manufacturing processes required to build at scale.

Any quantum computer, on a materials level, is more heterogeneous than a classical system, which makes integration harder. Quantum computing companies are not just designing qubits; they are designing their own lasers, optics, control electronics, thermal systems, packaging, and other enabling components. That works fine at a lab level, but it won’t scale.   

This is not a critique of ambition. It’s a reminder that ambitious technologies eventually have to be manufactured efficiently.  

Standardization does not mean giving up differentiation 

Standardization is difficult in any emerging technology sector. Companies worry that it will weaken their competitive advantage. In quantum, this concern is acute. Many startups are built around a specific qubit modality, a particular materials system, a proprietary architecture, or a novel way of preparing and controlling quantum states. 

However, if a quantum startup designs every enabling component itself, the road to a scalable product becomes impossible. A supplier may want to serve quantum companies, but if each customer needs different wavelengths, materials, detectors, packaging, or thermal requirements, the market won’t be large enough to justify the investment. Distinct non-proprietary layers in the quantum stack will make the sector more attractive to manufacturers and suppliers.   

This is where industry coordination becomes essential. Organizations like the QED-C play an important role by encouraging quantum companies to work together on future requirements. This will ultimately allow suppliers to build, at scale and at a sustainable cost, the components that quantum companies need.  

Classical computing has benefitted immensely from coming together on integration efforts like IEEE’s International Roadmap for Devices and Standards. For decades, the semiconductor industry has brought tool manufacturers, device engineers, and system integrators together to lay out and agree upon technical goals. Such planning allows different parts of the industry to advance towards common goals. The quantum industry is nascent and cannot plan at the same level as the semiconductor industry. However, recent efforts referenced in the first Quantum Technology Manufacturing Roadmap (prepared for the National Institute of Standards and Technology) demonstrate that alignment is possible and desirable.  

This roadmap-building may be unglamorous and difficult, but it’s required to work toward a mature industry. 

Standardization will emerge layer by layer, from control electronics, optical components, packaging, cryogenic interfaces, software abstractions, benchmarking, materials characterization, or manufacturing tolerances.

Narrowing without decelerating 

That does not mean the quantum field should prematurely pick a winner. The industry is still young, and the science is moving quickly. But it does mean researchers, companies, funders, and suppliers should begin evaluating quantum technologies not only for performance, but also for manufacturability, availability, cost, integration burden, and ecosystem fit. Foundries and component suppliers are looking at quantum as a viable market, but they need a picture of demand before they can justify investments into new materials or new tooling.  

Standardization will emerge layer by layer, from control electronics, optical components, packaging, cryogenic interfaces, software abstractions, benchmarking, materials characterization, or manufacturing tolerances. Over time, these convergences reduce cost and complexity without forcing every quantum company into the same architecture. 

For SRI, these questions are not just academic. Our Rydberg atom systems currently prepare rubidium atoms with four lasers that use four different specifications. We chose this approach because we could leverage lasers built for telecommunications systems that are widely available. Others use the same atoms prepared with three different lasers, some of which may be more expensive and less available. In lab settings, quantum researchers face unavoidable tradeoffs around lead times, maintenance, and total cost of ownership.  

Becoming an industry 

Standardization will determine the pace at which quantum becomes a durable industry. Achieving utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing will require years of expensive R&D. If every company must build an entirely bespoke system, the economics become punishing. Investors lose patience. Suppliers hesitate. Customers wait on the sidelines. Promising approaches may stall before they reach the scale needed to prove themselves. 

Standardization changes that equation. It gives suppliers a large market worth serving. It gives startups access to better components at lower costs. It gives foundries clearer investment signals. It gives researchers reusable platforms. And, ultimately, it gives early adopters confidence that today’s systems will not become tomorrow’s debt. 

Some companies will resist the shift. And standardization will inevitably benefit some more than others. But this accelerated convergence will ensure that quantum prototypes move steadily toward repeatable, economically feasible systems that customers buy.