We have heard about things such as: Quantum supremacy, qubits, quantum technology, but why do we need quantum computers when we have classical computers and super computers. Does quantum computer perform a simple 2+2 faster than the super computers and classical computers? What do you guys think? Can you imagine what a quantum computer looks like? Before writing this, I couldn’t even create an image of the quantum computer.
Imagine you playing a game, where to travel in the game you need some mathematical calculations. At first there were no computers so you could travel only by walking which was slow and there were many areas that were out of our reach as we didn’t have the means to access those areas.
Now imagine we developed early computers which can take larger inputs and provide more computational capabilities. We can now ride horses and access the previously inaccessible areas faster. But still, we cannot explore the areas such as: mountains, hills. But luckily computers evolved faster and transformed the map. Now we have roads, buildings and can access the hard terrains like mountains and hills using cars.
But, the Quantum Computers are not faster cars, they are submarines. Submarines are not meant to be used for accessing the hard terrains on land but are meant to explore the ocean which is a completely different terrain. They are meant to explore the unknown depth of oceans and currently we are just skimming the surface but there are more to be explored as we can think of it as a bottomless ocean. So, the quantum computers are mainly invented for solving problems and discovering areas that traditional computer can’t.
The Quantum Computers are kept in a dilution refrigerator. A refrigerator you might ask? Yeah, a refrigerator and not just any but insanely the coldest in the whole universe where the temperature is around 15 millikelvin (Basically, The Coldest thing in the universe).
The qubits are the term that keeps popping up when we talk about quantum computers. But to understand the qubits lets talk about the normal bits that are followed by classical computers. There are millions of bits made out of silicon in our classical computers that can have two states: 0(ground) or 1(excited).
Quantum computers on the other hand, works on qubits. Imagine a wave, a qubit could really likely be 0 or it could really likely be 1 and each qubit has a probability of being each neither 0 nor 1. Think of it as something in the middle, a middle ground between really high waves and really low waves. When a quantum computer works, these probabilities of either being 0, 1 or in between interacts with each other.
Got all confused with these technical terms, just understand that quantum computer calculated things differently than the classical computers.
The quantum computers are not faster than classical computers are everything. It’s not good for performing 2+2 and neither will it do that calculation faster but the quantum computers are used for finding patterns, structures in tons of data.
Mainly it is used for simulating the nature. You might want to develop a new medicine or a better lithium battery than Elon Musk or you might even be a huge Tony Stark fan fantasizing developing new elements in your billion-dollar skyscraper with the particle accelerator and all the fancy gadgets. For these fantasies to come into reality the quantum computers can be of great help as it helps us in understanding how the nature behaves at a molecular scale.
As I have mentioned above in my analogy that quantum computers are really made for different terrains, I don’t really think that we would be holding quantum computer in our palms as it would be like making a boat that can run in the roads as well.
All of our current security system works using an algorithm that requires billions of years to crack, so it is practically unbreakable. But the quantum computer can crack the algorithms in days or weeks. But don’t be scared, we haven’t reached their yet as it requires million qubits and right now we are around 433 qubits.
But do use quantum safe algorithms if you are planning to build new systems and applications in the coming future because soon we will be reaching to the million qubits mark.
So, there is no physical limit to what a quantum computer can do and who knows what the future might hold.
