Explaining Quantum Computing

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers comm this time I'm going to talk about quantum computing this stores and processes data using quantum mechanical States and may massively increase available computer power conventional computers are built from silicon chips that contain millions or billions of miniature transistors each of these can be turned on or off to represent a value of either 1 or 0 conventional computers subsequently store and process data using binary digits or bits in contrast quantum computers work with quantum bits or qubits these are represented in hardware using quantum mechanical States for example quantum computers may use a spin direction of a single atom to represent each qubit alternatively the spin direction of a single electron or the polarization orientation of a photon yet other designs supercool rare metals to allow qubit to be represented by the quantum spin of a tiny magnetic field you due to the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics individual qubits can represent a value of 1 0 or both numbers simultaneously this is because the particles or fields used to represent qubits can exist in more than one state or superposition at exactly the same point in time by attaching a probability to each of these states a single qubit can therefore process a wide range of values the facts that qubits are more smears of probability than definitive black-and-white certainties is exceptionally weird flip a coin and it cannot come up those heads and tails simultaneously and yet the quantum state of a qubit can in some senses do just that it is therefore hardly surprising that renowned nuclear physicist Niels Bohr once stated that anybody who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it you because their cubit will be able to represent a wide range of values quantum computers have the potential to perform massively parallel processing they will also be programmed with quantum algorithms that will process data according to the probability of a solution being correct this means that quantum computers are likely to excel at processing activities such as vision recognition and medical diagnosis the first sentient artificial intelligences are also likely to be quantum one of the first mainstream applications of quantum computing will be in security and data encryption today all online security systems will lie on prime number calculations at which quantum computers will Excel quantum computers have indeed already been termed the hydrogen bomb of cyber warfare you in 2007 a canadian company called d-wave announced the world's first commercially viable quantum computer this was based on a super cold 16 cubic processor made from the rare metal niobium while many people were somewhat skeptical of D waves claims in December 2009 Google revealed that it had been using D ways Hardware in image recognition experiments with a high level of success in May 2011 d wave launched a 1 to 8 cubic quantum computer called the d-wave 1 this supercooled machine is housed within a 10 square meter shielded room and priced at 10 million dollars the first D wave 1 has already been sold to the US aerospace and military contractor Lockheed Martin other companies including IBM are also pioneering quantum computing development in January 2011 a team from Oxford University even managed to quantumly entangle 10 billion cubits inside a highly purified silicon crystal the early foundations are therefore already being laid for quantum computers with processing capacities well beyond human comprehension you within ten years quantum hardware may transform computing for more information please see the quantum section of explaining computers comm but now that's it for another video and I hope to talk to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 203,238

Keywords: Quantum, computing, mechanics, qubit, superposition, D-Wave, future, encryption, security

Id: sICXOwOwS4E

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2012