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Daniel Lidar, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics & Astronomy, University of Southern California

What is quantum advantage? A quantum computing scientist explains an approaching milestone marking the arrival of extremely powerful computers

IBM's quantum computer got President Joe Biden's attention. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Quantum advantage is the milestone the field of quantum computing is fervently working toward, where a quantum computer can solve problems that are beyond the reach of the most powerful non-quantum, or classical, computers.

Quantum refers to the scale of atoms and molecules where the laws of physics as we experience them break down and a different, counterintuitive set of laws apply. Quantum computers take advantage of these strange behaviors to solve problems.

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