We have known for over twenty years that quantum computers would have unique powers for solving certain classes of computational problems.

Throughout these twenty years, workers have striven to identify a physical setting in which high-quality qubits can be created and employed in a quantum computing system.  Very promising devices have been identified in several different areas of low-temperature electronics, namely in superconductor and in single-electron semiconductor structures (e.g., quantum dots).  Efforts at scale-up are presently underway, with Google achieving now a 53-qubit system; even for modules of 10 qubits, the complexity of the classical electronic control system were clearly going to be one of the main barriers to further progress. The specifications of this control system are now well defined, and are daunting. In this talk I will touch on progress in modelling these complex control systems, and on the architectural objective based on mimicking the protection of quantum states afforded by topological matter.