0
The Net
4 June 2017 2.00 h

Quantum leap

IBM announces the construction of the first commercial quantum computer, but its capabilities are still theoretical

It could be ar­gued that quan­tum com­put­ing is com­put­ing at its purest, and when we fi­nally find out just how to apply it, our lives are sure to change very rad­i­cally. Yet, so far no one re­ally knows when that will be. In re­cent months, sev­eral com­pa­nies have an­nounced sig­nif­i­cant progress in this field, with some pro­jects that are even open to the pub­lic. Even so, as a con­se­quence, some may feel that they have been mis­led into be­liev­ing that this new way of pro­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion is al­ready here, which is cer­tainly not true. Or at least not en­tirely.

Sci­en­tists began to con­sider quan­tum com­put­ers three decades ago. On paper, these ma­chines are based on a com­pu­ta­tional en­vi­ron­ment com­pletely dif­fer­ent from what we have come to know, and they would have the abil­ity to solve prob­lems presently be­yond the reach of our most ad­vanced su­per­com­put­ers.

In fact, ac­cord­ing to some ex­perts, the ad­vent of quan­tum com­put­ers could spell the end up of com­puter se­cu­rity, as quan­tum com­put­ers will be able to hack the most com­plex of pass­words in a blink of an eye.

How is that pos­si­ble? Quan­tum com­put­ing is based on a com­pletely dif­fer­ent par­a­digm to the con­ven­tional sys­tems. Until now, in­for­ma­tion has been di­vided into bits, which can be ex­pressed in zeros and ones. Quan­tum com­put­ing, how­ever, makes use of the prop­er­ties of quan­tum physics, sub­atomic par­ti­cles that are not gov­erned by the most com­monly known prin­ci­ples of physics. What is of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to com­put­ing ex­perts is quan­tum su­per­po­si­tion, which en­ables elec­trons to have dif­fer­ent states si­mul­ta­ne­ously. Put sim­ply, while bits are ex­pressed as zeros or ones, the Qbits of these new com­put­ers can be both zero and one at the same time, which there­fore mul­ti­plies their pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ties.

An­other dif­fer­ence is that in a nor­mal PC, prob­lems are solved se­quen­tially: first one, then an­other, and so on. How­ever, quan­tum com­put­ers would be able to work in par­al­lel and the num­ber of tasks that could be dealt with si­mul­ta­ne­ously there­fore grows ex­po­nen­tially.

Chem­istry (and in­di­rectly med­i­cine), ma­te­r­ial de­sign, sci­en­tific re­search, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence are some of the main areas in which quan­tum com­put­ing is spark­ing the most in­ter­est, ac­cord­ing to IBM, one of the firms that is putting most ef­fort into its de­vel­op­ment.

“It promises to be the next big tech­nol­ogy, which will bring a new era of in­dus­trial in­no­va­tion,” said the vice pres­i­dent of IBM Re­search, Arvind Kr­ishna re­cently.

Quan­tum Ex­pe­ri­ence

The US firm has de­cided to fol­low dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives at the same time. Last year, it launched the pro­ject called Quan­tum Ex­pe­ri­ence, a cloud plat­form con­nected to the net­work of­fer­ing the pos­si­bil­ity to those who wish to ex­per­i­ment freely with a quan­tum proces­sor to pro­gram, cre­ate and test al­go­rithms. Since its launch, 40,000 users have car­ried out more than 275,000 ex­per­i­ments on the plat­form, which has led to the pub­li­ca­tion of a dozen ar­ti­cles in sci­en­tific jour­nals, ac­cord­ing to data made pub­lic by IBM. The prob­lem, how­ever, is that this pro­ject uses just a 5 Qbit (quan­tum bit) proces­sor, but to ar­rive at the de­sired out­come it would in the­ory need many more. Many, many more.

“At pre­sent, there are some ma­chines that are used for some quan­tic cal­cu­la­tions, but they have a lim­ited im­pact as they can only be used for one thing and are not all that su­pe­rior to today’s com­put­ers,” con­firms the di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tut de Ciències Fotòniques, Lluís Torner. This re­search cen­tre is also work­ing with quan­tics, but Torner is cau­tious about pre­dict­ing a date for these ma­chines going into gen­eral use.

“In a decade or maybe more, hope­fully there will be quan­tum sim­u­la­tors that will make cal­cu­la­tions that no cur­rent ma­chine can do, but not much more than that. To have a quan­tum com­puter as such, that is more pow­er­ful and with many dif­fer­ent ca­pa­bil­i­ties, will take sev­eral decades,” he pre­dicts.

That means we must treat with cau­tion IBM’s re­cent an­nounce­ment of the im­mi­nent con­struc­tion of the first com­mer­cially ded­i­cated quan­tum com­puter through its IBM Q ini­tia­tive, which the­o­ret­i­cally ex­ceeds cur­rent su­per­com­put­ers.

The com­pany has not yet given a date for the com­puter’s launch on the mar­ket, nor the con­di­tions under which it will be sold, but we must re­mem­ber that quan­tum com­put­ers take up far more space than even the first com­put­ers did, which oc­cu­pied whole floors and rooms.

Also, to take full ad­van­tage of the prop­er­ties of quan­tum com­put­ing, the QBITs must be lo­cated in sta­ble con­di­tions at tem­per­a­tures close to ab­solute zero (-273º), since ther­mal fluc­tu­a­tions or ra­di­a­tion af­fects their prop­er­ties. Thus, the in­fra­struc­ture they would need would be al­most im­pos­si­ble with the cur­rent tech­nol­ogy avail­able in our homes. Most likely, IBM would house the com­puter it­self, main­tain it, and allow ac­cess through the Cloud.

In any case, there are more play­ers in the game; Mi­crosoft and Google most cer­tainly. Se­crecy is para­mount but the most re­cent news in­di­cates that Google is work­ing on a pro­ject with around nine Qbits. It does not seem much, but one thing is for sure, the day that quan­tum com­put­ing takes a de­fin­i­tive step for­ward, Google is bound to be there.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed