Quantum Computation
Hello, friends. It's been a while since I last uploaded. I was working on learning (and unlearning) some new things. Anyhow, we're back. This week's article is on a novel field that possesses the potential to change the world as we know it and accelerate it to unfathomable limits by leaps and bounds. I am talking about quantum computing. And yes, the display image of the article is a quantum computer.
On the advice of my great astronomy professor, I watched the series Devs on Hulu. This series revolves around the potential of quantum computation and the aftermath of this technology when under the hands of bad powers. Although the cinematography, shots, acting, and VFX etc. was great, I (and I believe my professor too) do not completely agree on the fact that all that was shown in the series ought to be true in the future. However, it was a great watch.
This article is rather a short one, and is similar to a twitter thread I uploaded a month back. It is short, sweet, and replete with a lot of information that you'll need to get a basic understanding and gist of this impending banger. So, here we set off.
First off, quantum computing is not just an evolution of the classical computation generation, but an entire different species in the making. How?
The classical computers (the computers that you and I use) are based on the binary language which is nothing but 0s and 1s arranged in different ways to represent numbers, words, data etc. With technology advancing daily, we need much more efficient computers. Classical computers are getting faster and faster due to the perpetual shrinkage of transistors that are being produced. We already have transistors ranging as small as 2 nanometers wide. In comparison, atoms average a 0.5 nm width. Consequently, we are at the brink of the physical limit to create smaller transistors which is also the reason behind the gradual flattening of Moore's Law (1965) that states that the number of transistors in a circuit doubles every two years. This is where quantum computers come to the rescue. Quantum computers take into action the magical world of Quantum Mechanics (Read this thread that explains the main ideas of QM in simple terms). Most importantly, the concepts of superposition and quantum entanglement. Instead of the binary bits used by our classical computers, quantum computers use what are called quantum bits or qubits. While our classical bits can represent either 0 or 1 at one time, qubits can represent both at the same time. This increases the power of the quantum computation at an exponential level instead of linear. Because of this exponential growth in power proportional to the number of qubits, and the immense capability to crunch huge data in less time, quantum computers are the future. Quantum Computation will disrupt industries, but in a positive way. With the ginormous amount of iterations possible with qubits, quantum computers are best suited to solve high level optimization problems, problems involving big data, and can arguably create unbreakable encryption replacements.
Nevertheless, let's not be naïve; quantum computation also comes with its own set of disadvantages: data theft is a an acclaimed threat due to breakage of current encryption systems. They have a much higher error output. Because our current quantum computers use trapped ions, they need to be stored at temperatures near absolute zero, to avoid interactions and lose entangled pairs of qubits. To put into final perspective, Google's quantum processor Sycamore performed a calculation in 4 minutes, that would take IBM's summit over 10,000 years to do. Which means that our current quantum computation is 158 million times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer. It's a great time to be alive to witness such a revolution take turn to change the world.