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Working out of a small office on Breithaupt Street in Kitchener, the team at Quantum Benchmark has developed software that finds and suppresses errors in the calculations performed by quantum computers, and tells users the likelihood of the answer being right or wrong.

“It is solving a problem that people have been asking about for two decades,” said chief executive officer Joseph Emerson.

This week, the startup took a quantum leap forward, announcing a deal with tech giant Google. Its True-Q software will be integrated into Google’s open source platform for building quantum algorithms. The platform, called Cirq, was launched this week.

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There are many working prototypes of quantum computers at UW and other technology centres around the world. But so far, no one has produced a practical quantum computer that can be used to solve real-world problems.

Emerson said one of the main reasons for that is nobody could detect, control and correct the errors produced by quantum computers. At least until now.

“And so we have actually provided that solution, and we have provided that solution in a very robust way, and this is based on two decades of research from my team,” said Emerson.

Few people cared about the issue when he started researching it 15 years ago, but that changed as more advanced prototypes were developed, he said, because quantum computers use atomic particles the technology is inherently fragile and prone to errors.

As bigger and more powerful quantum computers are built, the chance of error increases, Emerson said, potentially reaching a 50/50 chance that answers produced by the machines are correct. That’s the same probability as a coin toss.

“The best people in the field have been emphasizing this point, that there are errors and that spoil the recipe, so to speak,” said Emerson. “So you can use a near-term quantum computer or current quantum computer and it will give you the wrong answer.”

Google recognizes the significance of the issue, he said.