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Can a quantum computer beat classical computer?

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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.

1. The Analogy

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.

2. Coldest in the Universe

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).

3. The Mystery of Qubits

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.