Google Quantum Team’s latest research cuts qubit needs to break RSA from 20 million to under 1 million noisy qubits.
Researcher Craig Gidney explains new methods like magic state cultivation reduce qubit requirements while keeping runtime under a week.
Google Quantum Team’s findings suggest Bitcoin and banking encryption face faster-than-expected quantum threats due to resource drops.
Google Quantum Team has dramatically lowered the estimated qubit count required to break RSA encryption, reshaping projections for cryptographic security.
https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1927162354128613683
Google Quantum Team Cuts RSA Cracking Requirement by 20 Times
The Google Quantum Team has revealed a new estimate showing that breaking 2048-bit RSA encryption may now be achievable with fewer than 1 million noisy qubits. This represents a 20-fold reduction from the 20 million qubits estimated in 2019. The updated findings also suggest that such a task could be completed in under a week.
Quantum researcher Craig Gidney, co-author of both the original and updated papers, stated, “I estimate that a 2048-bit RSA integer could be factored in less than a week by a quantum computer with less than a million noisy qubits.” He confirmed that the model retains the same technical assumptions made in 2019, such as “a square grid of qubits with nearest neighbor connections” and a “surface code cycle time of 1 microsecond.”
Innovations in Quantum Algorithms Lead to Efficiency Gains
The reduction in qubit requirements results from several technical advancements. According to Gidney, the improvement “comes mainly from using approximate residue arithmetic,” referencing recent work by Chevignard, Fouque, and Schrottenloher in 2024. He also noted gains from “storing idle logical qubits with yoked surface codes” and “allocating less space to magic state distillation by using magic state cultivation.”
Gidney explained that the longer runtime in the updated model is due to “performing more Toffoli gates and using fewer magic state factories.” However, this is offset by a substantial decrease in overall resource consumption. “I reduce the Toffoli count by over 100x,” he added, compared to previous approaches.
Bitcoin and Cryptography Security Under Quantum Scrutiny
While Bitcoin relies on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) rather than RSA, the findings raise questions about the broader security of blockchain technologies in a quantum future. Gidney emphasized that “planning the transition to quantum-safe cryptosystems requires understanding the cost of quantum attacks on vulnerable cryptosystems.”
This research signals a shift in timelines for quantum vulnerability. Systems once believed secure for decades may need reassessment sooner. The lowered qubit threshold accelerates the urgency around quantum-resilient cryptographic standards and protocols.
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