Quantum Computing — Is it really worth the hype?
Quantum Computing is being hyped to be the future of computing. Is it really worth the hype?
We are currently developing the fifth generation of computers and the advent of quantum computing will bring about a revolution. New breakthroughs in the fields of science, medications to save lives, machine learning and artificial intelligence are expected to happen in the near future.
Classical computers that we use in our everyday lives make use of electrical circuits, on the contrary Quantum computers make use of Quantum Mechanics concepts namely superposition and entanglement. Computers traditionally use bits to process information that can have a value of ‘0’ or ‘1’. Quantum bits or “qubits” are similar having values ‘0’ or ‘1’ but they can hold more complex information as compared to normal bits and can be in both ‘0’ and ‘1’ states because of superposition.
The combination of quantum properties and computing has given birth to powerful technology which will solve previously unsolvable problems. Quantum computers are much faster than classical computers. One comparison which solidifies this claim is; a classical computer will take around 300 trillion years to break RSA-2048-bit encryption key whereas a quantum computer can break it in around 8 hours. The difference is enormous. Imagine how much cybersecurity will change once quantum computers are more readily available. Quantum-based cryptographic systems would be more secure than traditional systems.
In the field of chemistry, quantum computers can help in finding new structures of compounds, if quantum computers were being used on a large scale it would been much easier to find a vaccine for deadly viruses like Covid-19 and Ebola.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning field will also change hugely because the quantum computers will be able to handle huge amount of data, algorithms will be faster and more accurate, data processing models will be better and multiple datasets could be used simultaneously which will help researchers explore more possibilities.
Companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Honeywell are some of the big companies working on quantum computing. They are achieving almost impossible feats and that would not be far when our normal laptops would go quantum.
IBM’s quantum experience provides a user with a limited number of qubits which can be used to implement some basic functionalities so if anyone is interested do check it out.
