Post Author - TYIT Dharini Iyer
Image credit: www.arrow.com
The electronic calculator was created by humans. Since then, the world of
computing has advanced by leaps and bounds! In the field of information
processing, the last several years have been particularly transformative; what were
previously considered science fiction fantasies are now technological reality.
Traditional computing has become tremendously quicker and more sophisticated,
allowing for smaller and more versatile systems. And while we've accomplished
great things with the traditional computing environment, it, too, has its
limitations...
WHY DO WE NEED MORE POWERFUL COMPUTERS?
"Why would we need any more powerful machines?" some people wonder. The issues we're trying
to address right now are extremely difficult and aren't well-suited to the architecture of traditional
computing. So, we can think of quantum computing as a novel set of tools, a new set of resources
for scientists, researchers, computer scientists, and programmers to create and enhance some of
these capabilities so that we can alter the world far more effectively than we can with classical
computers.
Moore's Law, which states that a computer's power doubles every 18 months, was predicted to
cease years ago by physicists.
Moore's Law is already showing signs of slowing down.
So, what exactly is the concern?
Standard silicon technology simply cannot sustain with the exponential growth in computer power.
Heat and leakage are the two primary concerns.
The challenge is that today's Pentium chips have a layer that is almost 20 atoms wide. It's all over
when that layer gets down to around five atoms across. The chip will melt due to the extreme heat
created. You can actually cook an egg on top of a chip before it starts to dissolve. Then there's the
issue of leaking. You have no idea where the electron is currently. The quantum hypothesis now
reigns supreme. You don't know where that electron is anymore, according to the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle, which means it may be outside the wire, outside the Pentium chip, or within
the Pentium chip. As a result, the rules of thermodynamics and quantum physics force an ultimate
limit on the amount of computational power that silicon can provide.
Image credit: https://nbic.ir
WHAT EXACTLY DO QUANTUM COMPUTERS DO?
A quantum computer is a technology, a
technical gadget, that could
theoretically harness the full power of
quantum physics to do computations
that a regular computer would be
incapable of. For example, Google's
quantum computer recently performed
a computation in less than four minutes
that would have taken 10,000 years for
the world's most powerful conventional
computer.
SO HOW IS QUANTUM COMPUTING DIFFERENT FROM CLASSICAL COMPUTERS?
All computers rely on the basic ability to store and modify data. Individual bits, which store
information as binary 0 and 1 states, are manipulated by modern computers. When we see the
letter "A," for example, our computers perceive a precise series of zeroes and ones.
A Qubit (quantum bit) is a unit of quantum information in quantum computing, analogous to a
classical computer bit. Whereas traditional bits can only carry one binary value, such as a 0 or 1, a
qubit may contain both values at the same time in what is known as a superposition state.
One way to approach Quantum computing could be the concept of parallel universes! Yes, parallel
worlds like the ones in Spiderman: No way home, Stranger Things or even Interstellar! Imagine a
quantum computer that exists in two different worlds at the same time. It could do twice as many
calculations as a classical computer existing in one world would be able to do. This allows quantum
computers to look at many different variables simultaneously, and solve them in parallel.
BUT IS QUANTUM COMPUTING THE FLAWLESS FUTURE
WE LOOK FORWARD TO?
Now, quantum computing in some sense is the ultimate computer, but there are enormous
problems with quantum computing.
➢ Decoherence:
Let's say we have two atoms and they vibrate in unison-This is called coherence. Assume
it gets contaminated by disturbances from the outside world, say your colleague coughs
or there’s a gush of wind from the window, and then all of a sudden, they're no longer in
synchronization. Once you lose the coherence the computer is useless.
In order to have a quantum mechanical state you have to isolate that system from all of its
environment, because if it interacts with the environment, the quantum mechanical magic
sort of washes away, and that's the problem with a quantum computer.
➢ Temperature:
Typically, qubits operate at 20 millikelvin, or about -273 degrees Celsius – temperatures
that are even colder than outer space. A very low temperature is necessary to keep them
stable. Otherwise, the super positional states (0 and 1) will quickly vanish into
decoherence before any useful calculations can be done.
APPLICATIONS OF QUANTUM COMPUTING
So, you may ask why do we go through all this trouble? The answer is the promise of quantum
computing is exponential speed-ups over classical computing for a particular set of problems.
And that's very important and exciting to researchers who are working on human-scale
problems ranging from things like developing drugs for cancer or better modelling the
molecular interactions of cancer and how it attacks cells and things like that, to big data
analysis, looking for patterns and inferences and drawing insight from large amounts of data,
or doing things like better modelling financial services markets and better managing risk and
so on. So, these are all kinds of applications that aren't particularly well-suited by today's type
of computers.