Quantum computing will do to traditional computing what Einstein did to Newton. The complexity of future quantum computers could be tamed by dedicated classical supporting electronics. To enable scaling, reduce footprint, and minimize power consumption we’re exploring the behavior of classical CMOS electronics at temperatures down to the millikelvin regime. Imec’s deep expertise in 3D integration on foundry-compatible 300mm platforms can be leveraged for quantum computing.

Quantum computers, with their huge computational power, are ideally suited to solving these problems. Indeed, some problems, like factoring, are “hard” on a classical computer, but are “easy” on a quantum computer. This creates a world of opportunities, across almost every aspect of modern life. The differentiation between generations of classical computers was based on the size of the processing unit and the speed of each elementary operation. For theoretical computer science, Eniac, the first computer based on vacuum tubes, and the most recent supercomputer are the same, just bigger and faster. Like any major technological shift, quantum computing comes with both promises and pitfalls.

agree that those who fail to adopt quantum computing will fall behind1

Since quantum gates preserve the state of superposition, we can use them to perform unitary computations that are reversible. Physically speaking, the evolution of the system in time is described by Schrödinger’s wave function. To retrieve any information from the quantum computer, however, we need to collapse the wave function.

Developing the necessary hardware and software may take until 2035 or even later. D-Wave’s quantum computers utilize a specialized technique called quantum annealing, specifically designed for optimization problems. When users input a problem into the system, the quantum processing unit considers all possible configurations at once, generating calculations corresponding to the most optimal arrangement of qubits. These calculations provide the best possible solutions, resulting in higher-quality results, particularly for large-scale problems. D-Wave systems are employed by some of the world’s biggest companies, including Google, NASA Ames, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Volkswagen. Supercomputers use traditional bits and parallel processing with multiple processors to handle different parts of a problem at once.

A comparison of classical and quantum computing

Quantum Algorithm development is still in its infancy and is lagging the hardware innovations. Most algorithm development is still very low level almost at the equivalent level of programming classical computers in binary. Classical computing algorithms and applications are based on layers of services and abstractions that have been built over decades.

In the realm of physics, it is not uncommon for different physical systems to have similar mathematical descriptions. Despite this, weighed against the potential benefits of quantum computing, Lyubashevsky says these risks shouldn’t stop the development of these machines. It’s a somewhat mysterious feature of quantum mechanics that even baffled Einstein in his time who declared it “spooky action at a distance”.

The challenge of quantum computing

One issue is that the usual way in which we mask/conceal the majority of our data online (encryption) is at risk. Currently, the safety of our encrypted data relies on the difficulty of finding the prime factors of certain large numbers. The ability to find these numbers is only limited by the amount of computational power we have at our disposal dedicated to doing this.

Quantum computing overview

Quantum computers utilize a variety of algorithms to conduct measurements and observations. These algorithms are input by a user, the computer then creates a multidimensional space where patterns and individual data points are housed. For example, if a user wants to solve a protein folding problem to discover the least amount of energy to use, the quantum computer would measure the combinations of folds; this combination is the answer to the problem. That is, rather than having to perform tasks sequentially, like a traditional computer, quantum computers can run vast numbers of parallel computations. The answer depends on the architecture of quantum systems, as some require extremely cold temperatures to function properly. Qubits can be made from trapped ions, photons, artificial or real atoms or quasiparticles, while binary bits are often silicon-based chips.

If a physical qubit is not sufficiently isolated from its environment, it suffers from quantum decoherence, introducing noise into calculations. Paradoxically, perfectly isolating qubits is also undesirable because quantum computations typically need to initialize qubits, perform controlled qubit interactions, and measure the resulting quantum states. Each of those operations introduces errors and suffers from noise, and such inaccuracies accumulate.

“The capacity of quantum computers to break current encryption methods cannot be understated,” she says. As a result, businesses should not merely be on a quest for quantum capabilities but also for quantum-resistant security measures. Another example of that is if we want to find two equal numbers in a large amount of data. Again, if we have one million numbers, a classical computer might have to look at all of them and take one million steps. We discovered that a quantum computer could do it in a substantially smaller amount of time.

Before we compute, it’s worth pausing for a second to try guessing the result. The point of guessing isn’t to get it right – rather, it’s to challenge yourself to start coming up with heuristic mental models for thinking about what’s going on in quantum circuits. Those mental models likely won’t be very good at first, but that’s okay – if you keep doing this, they’ll get better.

Uses and benefits of quantum computing

Through the Discovery Accelerator, researchers are leveraging advanced computational technology to expedite critical research into treatments and vaccines. These are extremely powerful traditional computers with thousands of CPU and GPU cores. If a supercomputer becomes stumped, it’s most likely because it was asked to handle a problem with a high level of complexity.

New fabrication techniques are also explored, to ensure high-quality surfaces and interfaces. Qiskit includes a comprehensive set of quantum gates and a variety of pre-built circuits so users at all levels can use Qiskit for research and application development. Metrology, the study of measurements, is a science with applications primarily in scientific instrumentation. High-quality measurement devices like atomic clocks, magnetic resonance imaging, and electron microscopes fall under the umbrella of metrology, and all stem from discoveries in quantum physics. So far, the Turing machines we have been discussing have been
deterministic; for such machines, their behaviour at any given time is
wholly determined by their state plus whatever their input happens to
be. In other words such machines have a unique “instruction
table” (i.e. transition function).