Innovation Summer 2026

Understanding the ‘impossible’ scale of quantum computers

Quantum Computing for Modeling of Molecules and Materials at the University of Victoria. Whereas classical computers that we use today can only store information in a binary of zeroes and ones

The federal government committed in its 2025 budget to investing more than $334 million over five years to strengthen Canada’s quantum ecosystem. This follows an initial investment into the National Quantum Strategy (NQS) of $360 million in 2023 and more than $1 billion invested in quantum

called bits, quantum computers leverage qubits (short for quantum bits) that can be zero and one at the same time. This means quantum computers can have exponentially more computing power than classical computers, said Dr. Joseph Salfi, P.Eng., an experimental quantum physicist and engineer who works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC and is a principal investigator at UBC’s Quantum Matter Institute. “If you take that to N bits, then you can have 2 to the N [2^N] different values all at the same time,” Salfi said. In other

science between 2012 and 2022. Federal officials are expecting a hefty return on

those investments: According to a study commissioned by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), the quantum sector will become a $139 billion industry in Canada with more than 200,000 jobs and $42 billion in returns by 2045, potentially contributing three percent to Canada’s GDP. “Quantum technology is out of the labs; it’s no longer a research endeavor. There’s a real industry with real application, with real tools today in

A packaged semiconductor qubits chip made at the Quantum Matter Institute, Advanced Nanofabrication Facility, at UBC. P hoto : N icholas P hillips

the market making a difference,” Laforest said. “Canada is one of the top countries in the world [in quantum].” Outscaling classical computers Among other technical differences, quantum computers leverage the quantum property of superposition – the fundamental idea that says a physical system can exist in a combination of all its possible states at the same time. That superposition ends once the system is measured or interacts with its environment, at which point it settles into a single outcome we can observe. “Things that you might only be able to represent on a large supercomputer can be boiled down to a single chip on a quantum computer,” said Dr. Thomas Baker, an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in

words, quantum computers can perform tasks at scales impossible for the world’s largest classical computers or classical computer networks. “If there are N variables you could set to zero or one, then you have 2^N tries,” Salfi explained. Even if each possibility is distributed across a different computer, the required hardware quickly exceeds physical limits. “If I have 53 parameters, I need 10^16 computers, and we don’t have that many computers.” Laforest grounded this number in something a bit more tangible. “If we want to do a precise simulation of a molecule with about 120 atoms, you can do it on a classical computer,” Laforest said. “But your classical computer will need a hard drive about the size of the solar system, and it will have to run for about 1,000 times the age of the universe.”

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Summer 2026 Innovation