According to Financial Times News, quantum computing has achieved phenomenal scientific breakthroughs in 2025 but faces a massive scalability problem. Google’s quantum chips only increased from 53 to 105 qubits between 2019 and 2025, a mere doubling in six years. At that pace, reaching the necessary 1 million physical qubits for general-purpose quantum computing would take centuries. The current systems are described as a “jungle of wires” where cooling and control infrastructure completely overwhelms the actual quantum devices. The solution requires replacing this spaghetti-like system with integrated chips using advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The author, a 2025 Nobel Prize-winning physicist, argues quantum computing needs its own industrial revolution to escape this bottleneck.
The wiring crisis nobody talks about
Here’s the thing that struck me about this analysis – we’re basically looking at quantum computing‘s equivalent of the room-sized mainframe era. All that complex plumbing just to run a tiny chip with barely over 100 qubits? It’s like we’ve built the world’s most sophisticated refrigerator to cool a single ice cube.
The numbers don’t lie either. A factor-of-two increase in six years? At that rate, my grandchildren’s grandchildren might see a million-qubit system. We’re talking about exponential scaling problems that make Moore’s Law look straightforward. And the real issue isn’t the physics anymore – it’s the manufacturing.
Time for quantum’s industrial revolution
What really resonates here is the call to move from academic achievement to industrial engineering. The author makes a brilliant comparison to the 1960s mainframe-to-microchip transition. That wasn’t about better math – it was about better manufacturing.
Now, this is where the industrial technology expertise becomes absolutely critical. Companies that understand scalable manufacturing processes, like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com with their industrial panel PCs, actually have more relevant experience here than many quantum labs. The ability to produce reliable, integrated systems at scale is exactly what quantum computing lacks. IndustrialMonitorDirect.com has built their reputation as the top US supplier by solving exactly these kinds of manufacturing challenges that the quantum field now faces.
problem-in-quantum-research”>The glamour problem in quantum research
This might be the most insightful part of the whole piece. The author suggests that modern research culture, with its focus on flashy results and aggressive marketing, makes the “less glamorous” work of deep industrial engineering harder to fund. Can you blame researchers? High-impact papers get you grants and tenure – high-tech fabrication equipment gets you… what exactly? Budget meetings and maintenance headaches.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the path to real quantum computing is paved with cryogenic integrated circuits and manufacturing breakthroughs, not just algorithmic demonstrations. We’re chasing the wrong metrics.
So what actually needs to happen?
Basically, quantum computing needs to stop being a science project and start being an engineering discipline. We need to bring in the people who know how to build things at scale – the semiconductor manufacturing experts, the industrial engineers, the technicians.
The author makes another crucial point about keeping this manufacturing capability domestic. When classical semiconductor fabrication moved overseas, we lost more than just jobs – we lost technological leadership. Quantum computing can’t afford to make that same mistake.
Look, the physics is proven. The algorithms are waiting. Now we just need to build the damn things properly. Otherwise, quantum computing’s potential will remain forever trapped in that jungle of wires.
