Into the Future: Quantum Computing 1.0

To know the future one should understand the past. Let's go back to 1812, when a young English man named Charles Babbage, thought of an idea of a mechanically calculating machine. He successfully designed it but was build only after his death. He is also known as The Father of the Computer. 

The Conventional Computer:

A computer is nothing but an information processor, which takes input from a user, reads it in 0s and 1s and processes it, then gives output back to the user. That means whenever you press a key, click the mouse, or start an application, you're sending instructions to the CPU. And, all these instructions, Facebook posts, Youtube videos, or even this LinkedIn post is getting converted into a long string of 0s and 1s. So computers work by manipulating 1s and 0s. These are binary digits or bits for short. Single bits are too small to be much use, so they are grouped together into units of 8 bits. Each 8-bit unit is called a byte. We often use these KiloByte/MegaByte/GigaByte as a memory unit in computers. Since the invention of the computer, a lot of types of computers were built. But, all of them were based on the Binary concept, i.e., all of them at the end work on 0s or 1s.

The Quantum Computer

Now let's come to the early 1980, Quantum computing began here when physicist Paul Benioff proposed a quantum mechanical model. Quantum means the smallest possible discrete unit of any physical property, such as energy or matter. So, Quantum computing is an area of computing focused on developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the behavior of energy and material on the atomic and subatomic levels. Quantum computers use Quantum Computing.

Why Quantum Computer:

Quantum computers are fast because rather than store information using bits represented by 0s or 1s as conventional digital computers do, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, to encode information as 0s, 1s, or both at the same time. - which means they have the potential to process exponentially more data compared to classical computers. Quantum computers can create vast multidimensional spaces in which to represent these very large problems. Classical supercomputers cannot do this. Algorithms that employ quantum wave interference are then used to find solutions in this space and translate them back into forms we can use and understand. Google, said in 2019 that its Sycamore quantum processor took a little more than three minutes to perform a task that would occupy a supercomputer for thousands of years. Doubling the power of a classical computer requires about double the number of transistors working on a problem. The power of a quantum computer can be approximately doubled each time only one qubit is added.

Scenario: 

1. If you want to search 1 item from a list of 1 trillion item, and if each item took 1 microsecond to check, then the classical computer may take around a week whereas Quantum Computer can do that task within 1 second due to its Grover's search and other algorithms. 

2. For instance, eight bits is enough for a classical computer to represent any number between 0 and 255. But eight qubits is enough for a quantum computer to represent every number between 0 and 255 AT THE SAME TIME. A few hundred entangled qubits would be enough to represent more numbers than there are atoms in the universe.

Thank you for reading

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Akshaykumar Malpani