Good resolution #10: Discover how quantum computing will affect your business!

[#TogetherUpgrade2023] A new year under the sign of challenge, sharing and innovation! To start the year well, our experts have taken up the challenge of making good resolutions, a challenge they will help you meet with their expertise and advice.

Jesus Otero , innovation manager, FabLab de Madrid and à Iker Leanizbarrutia, PhD , Researcher in Quantum Computing Inetum want to challenge you ??

The word “quantum” has become a common adjective that seems to make better everything attached to.

From Quantum Machine Learning to Quantum Computing, it seems that adding the magic word makes it just better, but… will this revolution affect your business??

Let’s start first with a brief introduction of what “quantum” means. Quantum is the field of physics where really small things are studied, below the scale of molecules and atoms. In this realm, some phenomena are really strange compared to everyday life: particles behaving in two states simultaneously, uncanny correlations between particles difficult for our minds to grasp… But the underline is that science learned how to use these quantum properties to perform several tasks, one of them being computations with algorithms.?

Thanks to the mastery of these quantum properties, there are computational problems that can be solved with much fewer steps than using classical computers. This means that previously unsolvable problems could become tractable, and previous problems that took time to solve were now faster to solve.??

Two of the most well-known examples are Grover’s and Shor’s algorithms. The former algorithm, also known as the quantum search algorithm, allows to search for a specific item within a list without the need to go through the entire list, in a more efficient way than any classical counterpart. Shor’s algorithm can find the prime factors of an integer in a much more efficient way than any classical computer; it doesn’t seem a big deal, but a lot of the encryption today relays in the impossibility for computers to perform this operation within a realistic timeframe.?

However, you don’t have to panic yet, because nowadays we are not mastering the quantum properties up to this level, although we are not far either. Nowadays quantum computers are noisy, introducing random errors while running the desired algorithm. That is why they are called NISQ – Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum computers. The before-mentioned algorithms are out of reach with today’s technology, but other algorithms are already viable.?

Nowadays most common use cases are related to combinatorial or optimization problems, there are quantum algorithms that provide a range of the most efficient outcomes from the entire possible setting. Although these algorithms don’t provide the best solution, the solution set they offer is better than randomly picking one, and in a much more efficient way than computing all the possibilities by brute force. Applications of these types of problem range from portfolio optimization in finance, to the known traveler salesman problem to optimize routes, or cargo packing optimization in logistics; always problems where a certain combination is the most efficient and desired outcome.??

Nowadays we can check and compare all these cases with a classical computer, but we are approaching fast to the point where classical computers cannot keep up with the difficulty of the problem that quantum computers can solve. Even though currently these quantum algorithms are toe to toe with classical computers, with the current trend in the progress of quantum hardware, quantum computers will outperform classical ones quite soon. From that point on, any organization that was previously using quantum computing will start to see more optimal solutions, reducing costs and being in general more efficient than other organizations with no quantum expertise.?

However, you don’t have to despair, because access to quantum computers is more affordable than you think. Even though quantum computers are expensive to build, companies that produce them are giving remote access to these quantum computers in order to gain profit from their big investments. We could say that we are witnessing the birth of quantum cloud computing, and you can join!?

To sum up, we haven’t reached yet a clear quantum advantage, but we are closing the gap really fast. Once the mastery of the quantum is achieved and fault-tolerant quantum computers are available, the newborn quantum revolution is going to gain speed, and fast. Better be acquainted with this new technology, shall we explore it together??

Did you know? The FabLab in Madrid is a team of 20 people working on computer vision, language, AI, XR and Quantum. It is also a place of exchange where we have received more than 70 clients in 2022.

Want to know more? Let's meet at the FabLab in Madrid!