The Quantum Computing

In this post we will talk about the principal theme of this blog. What is quantum computing? Why many people around the whole world are making researches about it? What’s the problem with it? Why can’t we stay in our home sweet home living our lazy and accommodated lives in front of TV like homer simpson? 😥

That’s why we’re here, to try to answer this and others questions…

The Big Problem

Gordon Earl Moore is the father of the problem. You can blame him if you want, because in middle of 60’s he affirmed that every 18 months the number of transistors would double in a processor. This increase his processing power at the same manufacturing cost. But, there’s always a “but”, because of this evolution, in the year 2020 every bit will have an atom dimension reaching its limit. This theory is also know as Moore Law.

Gordon Earl Moore and his law

The Solution

Since it’s getting smaller, the transistor is reaching its limit cause of the material used, the silicon, which lose electric conductive characteristics necessary in processing when smaller. There is a new material been researched to substitute silicon called graphene. But, remember the “but” thing? Since we reach the atomic size, why not research and use the physical properties that reign the subatomic world to create new electronics devices that will increase processing power near light speed?

Light Speed

What a fabulous solution! Is just manipulate the particles that wins and lose little packages of energy, called quanta (plural of quantum – Ex.: quantum of light is a photon), some protons, neutrons, positrons and… voilá! Easy task control quantum phenomena. #butitsnot. Despite of the complexity in manipulating subatomic properties, this is a solution that’s been more and more viable with real results and making great advances in researches.

But What is Quantum Computing?

We can say that quantum computing is the use of quantum physical and mechanics properties and laws to realize computational processing. It uses quantum bits (qubits) to store and logical gates to process data, beyond of others quantum properties like entanglement and superposition.

Main Advantages:

• Realize thousands of calculations per second;
• Speed in the search of information in database extremely fast;
• Cost reduction in software validation and verification during its creation;
• Low energy consumption;
• Cost reduction with more efficient combinations.

 

Main Disadvantages:

• Lose easily informations stored on qubit if it have electromagnetic interference;
• Overheating;
• Big difficulty on stabilize entanglement of many qubits;

 

Possibles Applications:

• Security -> Thanks to entanglement properties, any kind of interference on transmitted datas or during any communication, it results in changes being instantly detected.
• Teleportation -> With entanglement is possible transmit a quantum information from a place to another instantly without going through the space between them.
• Factoring Prime Numbers -> Allows breaking any actual encryption in few minutes.
• Logistic -> Optimizing possibles routes combinations making more efficient flight organization, for example.
• Simulations -> To reproduce natural behavior with more precision predictions of natural phenomena and chemical reactions to make new drugs, development of new catalysts and material, speed up the development of artificial intelligence, develop new industrial process, and others inimaginable.
• Quantum Sensors -> Realize with more precision measurements physical quantities.
• Internet -> More security and speed on communications and sending datas.

Where We Are Now?

The running for the first prize of the quantum computing is happening by Canada, USA, Russian, Netherlands, Australia, China and Japan. Quantum computers are reality now, but not so much. The canadian D-Wave is the pioneer in developing quantum computers. Its more recent machine is D-Wave 2000Q that has 2000 qubits and can do optimization tasks, simulations, pattern recognition, cyber security, financial and images analysis, bioinformatics, learning machine and hardware and software validation and verification. It is a big and huge box specialized that needs cooling near -273ºC to its processor realize some task.

The running for quantum computing is fierce…

Some experts in the area contest D-Wave computer saying that they don’t use quantum physics phenomena in processing activities and being just supercomputers. The Institute of Quantum Computing of Canada goes in the other hand of D-Wave. They research a universal quantum computer that will be able to solve any problem, and scalable, and make more powerful machines with the same technology.

Some governmental and private organizations are in this race. The interesting of NASA in quantum computing is to make better programming on the task realized by astronauts and in the questions related to the universe origins. IBM put in the cloud the IBM-Q, a quantum simulator, and made available a quantum development kit (QISKit). Following the same path, Microsoft released a quantum development kit in Q# language integrated with visual studio. Both companies have as main goal software development that works in their quantum simulators and then in their future quantum computers. Google, Intel, Lockheed and others companies are realizing their own researches according to their interesting.

Still exists many things to be researched and developed until a true quantum computer become reality. Just a few elements were created and its fair to say that quantum studies didn’t get out from labs (except D-Wave controversial equipaments).

References:
A Computação Quântica