Afterword

The computing capacity and performance of quantum systems must increase dramatically until we have full fault tolerance and hundreds of thousands of qubits. These metrics may not increase smoothly over the next few years and decades, but might instead jump like a step function as we improve this or that part of the hardware, software, or system engineering.

Quantum computing is not a niche: I predict it will first be used to complement classical computing systems and then grow in power and importance as the 21st century progresses. It could very well become the most important computing technology of our lifetimes.

In this book, I have tried to give you a solid foundation for understanding quantum computing. Mathematics is needed to see what is really going on, but I have provided what you need to get well into the subject. In various places, I have pointed out how you can learn more about a topic. I encourage you to do so, and you are now equipped for independent...