Qubit Scaling vs. Cryptographic Requirements

This interactive chart shows the race between qubit scaling trajectories and the physical qubit counts required to break modern encryption standards. Use the sliders to explore how doubling time and error rate improvements affect whether quantum computers can threaten cryptography before post-quantum migration is complete.

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The horizontal dashed lines mark the estimated physical qubit counts needed to run Shor's algorithm against RSA-2048 and ECC-256 at various error rates. The projection line extrapolates from the latest physical qubit count using the doubling time you select. Toggle the PQC migration timeline to see whether post-quantum cryptography standards are likely to be deployed before the threat materializes.

At the default 1x error improvement setting, roughly 20 million physical qubits are needed to break RSA-2048 -- a figure that remains far beyond any plausible near-term trajectory.