Quantum Computing is addressed as the future of computing technology. It is the dream of technological companies to make the Quantum Computers a reality.
Quantum Computing is that technology which makes Artificial Intelligence (AI) even SMARTER!!!
The concept of Quantum Computing was laid down in late nineties but progress towards it was actually started in 2001 when researchers demonstrated Shor’s algorithm to factor 15 using a 7-qubit Nuclear Magnetic Resonance(NMR) computer. After that, different researchers, through different Universities, focused on making an effort to advance in Quantum Computing by upgrading qubit processors. D-Wave Systems Inc., the world’s first quantum computing company announced on June 22, 2015 that it has broken the 1000 qubit barrier .
Quantum computers: a grossly oversimplified introduction
The foundation of all computing is a logic gate—a simple yes/no switch. In modern computers, one position of the switch represents 0; the other represents 1. Your laptop computer contains billions of such gates, each of which switches between 1 and 0 billions of times a second.
Nonetheless, your computer has a handicap, imposed by classical physics. At any given moment it can only be in one state—one particular combination of 1s and 0s across those billions of gates. It has to step through a sequence of such states to complete a calculation. But what if, instead, a vast number of copies of your computer could somehow exist in parallel, each representing one of these possible states, and collectively perform the entire calculation simultaneously?
Key to that is to shrink the gates small enough as mentioned in Quantum Physics and such small gates are known as “qubit” as mentioned earlier. This can exist in all the possible combinations of 0s and 1s at once and thus it is known as Superposition of 0 and 1. (Now you are having a light bulb moment!)
The technical challenges of quantum computing
One of the biggest problems is that quantum computing technology is extremely unstable. Noise, movement and even the operation of the component parts of a quantum computer can cause the functionality to fail in a phenomenon called quantum decoherence. This is the breakdown from a quantum state to a classical state.
Quantum Computing – Today
Recently, many technological companies have participated in the race of Quantum Computing, as through that company will have an opportunity to grow in future. Huge companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc. contributed a lot towards Quantum Computing.
China-the technology advanced country, have announced to set up the world’s first ever and largest hack proof quantum computing communications network from Beijing to Shanghai. Physicists in China had also carried out the first demonstration of Quantum Artificial Intelligence.
IBM- a tech giant, have made available Quantum Computer to general public as a cloud service! This is the first time any company is making available the use of Quantum Computing to public and that too for free! Known as the IBM Quantum Experience, the tech company calls it the world’s first quantum computing platform delivered via the IBM Cloud. Resources are limited for now but it’s a great step towards the future of computers. To use IBM’s free cloud computing service, all you have to do is to go on the official website of IBM or you can click here IBM Quantum Computing.
You would know the difference between classic computer and quantum computer when you use both the computers at a time and check out which one performs better 🙂
– Nishith Vaghela
Life At Height 