Quantum Device Scalability: Challenges and Solutions

A year ago, the Commerce Department blacklisted seven supercomputing entities for their association with the People’s Liberation Army. Further, there is evidence that the Chinese government has been stealing encrypted U.S. government and commercial data, warehousing it against the day when quantum computers can break today’s encryption. Quantum computing utilises quantum mechanical phenomenon such as entanglement and superposition to manipulate qubits to perform computation on a quantum computer. Currently available are tools to create and run programs on publicly usable quantum computers as well as resources to learn about them. As well as breaking the security of online transactions and communications there is also the fear that quantum computers could crack Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies as they are also based on RSA encryption. In practice, this is extremely unlikely to be a risk to either cryptocurrencies or the web in the short term.

Indeed, Atom Computing’s new computer is bigger, but not necessarily more powerful. The whole thing can’t yet be used to run a single calculation, for example, due to the accumulation of errors as the qubit count rises. Quantum computing researchers are working on a range of qubits—the quantum equivalent of bits represented by transistors in traditional computing—including tiny superconducting loops of wire (Google and IBM), trapped ions (IonQ), and photons, among others. But Atom Computing and other companies, like QuEra, believe neutral atoms—that is, atoms with no electric charge—have greater potential to scale. Also, even for simpler things like playing chess, scheduling airline flights, and proving theorems, quantum computers—in their current state at least—would suffer from many of the same algorithmic limitations as classical computers. Quantum computing also has incredible importance for the potential of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Recent research suggests that it could have potential applications in cryptography.[2] This has been a common issue though raised by skeptics, that the demonstration problems solved are often contrived and/or of little or no practical value. This has led some teams to focus more on practical applications and industry partnerships to focus on materials research like improving electric vehicle batteries and drug research. There’s also interest in financial services like portfolio optimization and fraud detection among others.

Quantum computing – key technology of the 21st century

By the end of this decade or the beginning of the next, the error correction and programming difficulties of gate model quantum computing may be addressed, opening up an even wider range of application. More and more enterprises are discovering the value that quantum annealing is already delivering today—not only practical optimization benefit, but also valuable experience in the quantum domain. Qubits can be knocked out of quantum states by stray magnetic fields or gas particles. Whereas scaling got a lot of attention a few years ago, the focus has shifted to error-correction in service of scale.

In March, Sanders published a report that found governments have pledged around $4.2 billion to support quantum research. Some notable examples include South Korea’s $40 million investment in the field and Singapore’s Ministry of Education’s funding of a research center, The Center for Quantum Technologies. China, for example, has committed a great deal of brainpower to the quantum race. Researchers have touted breakthroughs and debates are simmering over whether China has surpassed the U.S. on some fronts.

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At that time, China said it was the second country to have achieved “quantum supremacy” after the US. It said Jiuzhang 1.0 was 10 billion times faster than Google’s 55-qubit Sycamore, which is a general-purpose superconducting quantum computer. Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the cost of forgetting the path they took. Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum future. But the rise of a powerful class of error-correcting codes suggests that the task might be slightly more feasible than many feared.

First-principles stopping calculations are classically challenging because they involve the dynamics of large electronic systems far from equilibrium, with… The algorithm consists of two parts, the first of which is executed in a classical computer, and the second executed in a quantum one that makes use of the quantum Fourier Transform. We will not delve into the mathematical details of this algorithm as they’re complex and therefore beyond the scope of this article. The answer is that classical computation cannot determine the right answer in less than two queries. In both cases, we won’t know whether the output was produced by a constant or balanced function. We therefore have to query the algorithm a second time to make the correct determination.

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“This is not just an advancement in technology; it’s a paradigm shift fundamentally altering the realm of what’s computationally possible,” says West, emphasizing quantum computing and its impact. She explains that in conventional computing, data are processed using bits that can be either a “0” or “1,” operating in a linear fashion. Quantum computing, on the other hand, leverages the principles of quantum mechanics through the use of qubits. These qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, granting quantum computers a level of computational prowess that is far superior to even some of the most advanced supercomputers.

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When the voltage is low or close to none, we use it to represent state 0 and when the voltage is higher, we use it to represent 1. In other words, modulations of voltage magnitudes allow us to mechanistically realize a binary system of representation. Sequences of these low-voltage and high-voltage states are subsequently arranged into electrical circuits that simulate logical operations like AND, XOR etc called logic gates. Combinations of logical operations through electrical circuitry are subsequently scaffolded to execute any computable algorithm.

Quantum computing—the time is now

Even simple debugging of algorithms is significantly harder when you can’t step through the algorithm and the results are in probabilities. Looking at how we improve this development stack is critical to building more sophisticated quantum computing algorithms. Financial Institutions need to look at possible solutions to speed up optimisation and simulations hence the interest in Quantum Computing. For Monte Carlo simulation in quantum computing, there is an algorithm called Quantum Amplitude Estimation.

Diplomats might also include quantum in discussions of rules and norms around other emerging technologies like AI. Existing fora, such as the International Telecommunication Union’s AI for Good initiative, could provide models for facilitating intergovernmental conversations about quantum governance. Yet national and international efforts will only go so far, because private sector investment is driving quantum research. Today, Google and IBM are competing over press coverage and processing speeds. Quantum also has the potential to significantly increase the connectivity, security, and speed of the internet. The so-called quantum internet links quantum devices together using entanglement.

Europe is pushing to create a network infrastructure based on quantum physics. Chemistry, for example, is arguably best thought of as a
“practically” oriented discipline concerned with the ways
in which systems can be manipulated for particular purposes
(Bensaude-Vincent (2009)). A startup called Atom Computing has announced the first quantum computer to pass the 1,000-qubit milestone. The prototype, due to become available for use in 2024, leapfrogs IBM’s announcement of its new quantum computer platform expected in the next few weeks. Our latest systems are built for performance and practicality, enabling partners to solve their largest and most complex real-world business problems.

However, it is crucial to note that the desired outputs of quantum computation can only be retrieved through measurement. The negative signs help distinguish equivalent outputs such that every operation can in principle be invertible or reversible. All quantum computations will need to be reversible to leverage the computational capacities of quantum states, namely the states of superposition and entanglement prior to measurement. As we will see later, the state of superposition (as well as entanglement) endows quantum computing with advantages that elude classical computing.