Thinking On Paper Build a Quantum Computer: The 5 Things You Need
What if someone handed you the recipe for a quantum computer?
Coleman Collins of IonQ breaks down DiVincenzo's criteria—the five capabilities any system needs to be a quantum computer.
Physicist David DiVincenzo created the checklist. Every major quantum architecture (superconducting circuits, trapped ions) follows it.
The five requirements:
1. A well-defined qubit (your basic unit of quantum information)
2. Initialization (set every qubit to a known starting state reliably)
3. Long coherence times (qubits stay stable long enough to compute without losing quantum state)
4. Measurement (read each qubit's state at the end—ideally individually)
5. Universal gate set (single-qubit control + entanglement = any computation you want)
Mix them together. You have a quantum computer.
We talk about:
- Why these five criteria matter (the foundation of every quantum system)
- What coherence means (how long quantum states survive)
- Why measurement is harder than it sounds
- How entanglement enables universal computation
- Which quantum architectures excel at which criteria
- Why trapped ions vs superconducting qubits make different tradeoffs
This is the foundation. Every major quantum company—IBM, Google, IonQ, Rigetti—is solving these five problems in different ways.
Now you know what they're building toward.
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