Into a World of Quantum Supremacy
Let’s start this the traditional way, Cambridge dictionary defines Quantum as the smallest amount or unit of something, especially energy. If you look through google, the word quantum, you will find that its use has been increased in the recent years. It has became a buzzword these days. So what does this Quantum Supremacy means in the 21st century?
According to wikipedia, quantum supremacy is the goal of demonstrating that a programmable quantum device can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time. Quantum supremacy was achieved using quantum computers. These quantum computers unlike our classical computers uses quantum physics for their operations.
Quantum physics is branch of physics which deals with aspects of nature at microscopic levels. In laymen terms, quantum physics deals with particles at the atomic level that is at the scale of photons and electrons. A quantum computer operates by controlling the behavior of these particles, which is very different from the way our traditional computers work. Quantum physics relies on a concept named as superposition, which implies that at a particular instant of time a particle can exist in more than one form. For example in young’s double slit experiment, it was observed that electrons exist in particle form as well as in the wave form at the same time.
What this has to do with the world of computers can be understood with two examples. Let us consider that we are spinning a coin, there are two possible outcomes when it comes to rest, either heads or tails, but while spinning we are not sure about the outcome it can be either one of them. In classical computers we will have outcome as either one of the bit, 0 or 1(For understanding purposes I have mapped 0 to heads and 1 to tails). But in Quantum computers the outcome can be either 0 or 1 or the combination of both. In the classical computers the binary outcome was represented by a bit, whereas in the world of Quantum computing the outcome is represented by a Quantum Bit also known as a Qubit.
Let us consider another example, assume that we have a 4 bit system, that 4 bit system can be mapped to 16(2 power 4) different values ranging from 0000 to 1111. Out of these 16 values, we can only have one output that is calculated on the basis of some measurements and comparisons. Whereas in a quantum computer, a qubit can be all the 16 values at the same time. So those 16 values can be used for computation at the same time. So for a 4 bit system, a quantum computer is 16 times faster than our classical computer.
What Can Quantum Computers Do?
Although we are in a very early stage to tell that what these machines can or cannot do, and it’s not just about doing things efficiently, quantum computers are here to do things which were way too complex to be done by classical computers. Here are the list of things that can be achieved using Quantum Computing.
Artificial Intelligence
AI based systems learn by experience, that is their accuracy is proportional to feedback given to them. The feedback given is based on probabilities of many possible outcomes. So AI is considered as an ideal candidate for quantum computing.
Medicines
Today, it takes pharmaceutical companies up to 10+ years and often billions of dollars to discover a new drug and bring it to market. Using quantum computing we can synthesize new elements and study their properties, that can boost up the drug development process.
Cybersecurity
The world of internet has been quite vulnerable due to increasing number of cyber-attacks that are occurring on a daily basis. quantum computing combined with machine learning capabilities can help in developing various encryption algorithms that can be used to generate combat cybersecurity threats. This world of quantum computing is known as quantum cryptography.
Weather forecasting
Weather forecasting can be considered as a tough nut to crack. No forecast can be 100% accurate. However there is a need to provide advance warning of mild weather to prevent catastrophic events. With the current technology it is very difficult to keep an eye on entire globe to predict catastrophic events. In order to achieve a great accuracy in weather forecasting domain, we need more computational brute force. This can be achieved using quantum computing.
Finance
Quantum computing in financial sector can be used to design better portfolios. The financial sector contains many transaction run by algorithms. Using quantum computers we can increase the speed of those transactions allowing organizations to have a smoother workflow.
The era of quantum computing started in the year 1980, but to this day it still remains uncertain. The reason being that quantum computers are very difficult to engineer, build and operate. These machines are incredibly sensitive to interference. A slight environmental noise can knock a qubit out of a state of superposition. As a result quantum computers are kept in such facilities which are isolated from any sort of electrical interference. They are kept at absolute zero temperatures which is colder than space.
As of this day, the best quantum computer has 53 qubits, which seems too powerful but they are still far away from their ultimate goal. According to a research, we need at least hundreds of thousands qubits in a quantum computer for their practical implementations. For breaking the RSA encryption we need millions of qubits.
Many companies are spending millions of dollars in research & development of Quantum computers, with Google and IBM leading the way. Google claimed to have achieved Quantum supremacy in October 2019, by doing benchmark testing on logic gates on 53 qubit quantum computer processor named as “Sycamore”. According to team, they were able to perform computation in 200 seconds which would have required world’s fastest supercomputer 10000 years. Although IBM claimed that their supercomputer performed the same computation in 2.5 days.
Although many researchers have made a great progress in developing the algorithms that Quantum computers will use, but these machines themselves still need a lot of work.
“In 20 years, quantum computing will not be just an option. It may be our only option, from an energy perspective, let alone from a computational standpoint-Dr. Marcos Lopez de Prado”
Image Source- Google Images
