Quantum Computers: How They Work and What Can They Do?

humans invented the electronic calculator 80 years ago since then the world of computing has witnessed seismic advancements the past few years in information processing have especially been transformational what were once thought of as science fiction fantasies are now technological realities classical computing has become more exponentially faster and more capable and are enabling devices smaller and more adaptable we are beginning to evolve beyond classical computing into a new data era called quantum computing it is envisioned that quantum computing will accelerate us into the future by impacting the landscape of artificial intelligence and data analytics the quantum computing power and speed will help us solve some of the biggest and most complex challenges we face quantum technology has been quickly approaching mainstream adoption several financial companies have recently announced that they could soon introduce quantum algorithms to price financial instruments industry experts anticipate that quantum will form a one trillion dollar industry in the decades ahead to understand what's going on it's useful to take a step back and examine what exactly it is that computers do let's start with today's digital technology at its core the digital computer is an arithmetic machine it made performing mathematical calculations cheap and its impact on society has been immense advances in both hardware and software have made possible the application of all sorts of computing to products and services today's cars dishwashers and boilers all have some kind of computer embedded in them and that's before we even get to smartphones and the internet without computers we would never have reached the moon or put satellites in orbit but there is a problem with classical computers they use binary signals that are measured in bits those famous ones and zeros of code this means that the more complicated the code the more processing power is required and the longer the processing takes to achieve a specific computational objective there are many tasks that traditional computing devices struggle with even when the task is dispersed across millions of machines a particular problem they struggle with is a category of calculation called combinatorics these calculations involve finding an arrangement of items that optimizes some goal as the number of items grows the number of possible arrangements grows exponentially to find the best arrangement today's classical computers basically have to iterate through each permutation to find an optimal solution in many cases this can require an enormous number of calculations and this is where quantum computers come in quantum computers are based on a completely different model of how the world works quantum computers use atomic quantum states to run computation data is held in qubits which can also be set to one of two values a qubit can be any two level quantum system such as a spin and a magnetic field or a single photon zero and one are the system's possible states like the photons horizontal or vertical polarization in the quantum world the qubit doesn't have to be just one of those it can be in any proportions of both states at once this is called superposition but as soon as you test its value for example by sending the photon through a filter it has to decide to be either vertically or horizontally polarized so as long as it is unobserved the qubit is in a superposition of probabilities for zero and one and you can't predict which it will be but the instant you measure it it collapses into one of the definite states superposition is a quantum computer's superpower classical computer's bits can be in one of two to the power of four different configurations at a time that's 16 possible combinations out of which you can use just one four qubits in superposition however can be in all of those 16 combinations at once this number grows exponentially with each extra qubit another surprising property of the quantum computers is the entanglement effect what this means is that the data held in qubits is affected by data held in other qubits instantaneously no matter how far they are apart when measuring just one entangled qubit you can directly deduce properties of its partners without having to look from a computing perspective this implies that data is recorded and stored in a different way through non-binary qubits of information rather than binary bits reflecting the multiplicity of states in the quantum world this multiplicity can enable faster and lower cost calculation for combinatoric arithmetic and is a true game changer quantum computers can do many of the things that classical computers can however in addition they do one big thing classical computers cannot perform combinatorics calculations quickly google's quantum computer for example has recently completed a calculation in less than four minutes that would take the world's most powerful classical computer 10 000 years to complete the following five domains will be disrupted by the quantum computers first artificial intelligence quantum computing opens up new opportunities in ai which often involves the combinatoric processing of very large quantities of data in order to make better predictions and decisions a growing research field in quantum machine learning identifies ways that quantum algorithms can enable faster ai the current limitations on the technology and software make quantum artificial general intelligence a fairly remote possibility but it certainly makes thinking machines more than a subject for science fiction second drug discovery chemical and biological engineering involve the discovery and manipulation of molecules doing so involves the motion and interaction of subatomic particles in other words it involves quantum mechanics as molecules get more complex the number of possible configurations grows exponentially it becomes a combinatoric's calculation suitable for a quantum computer with the emerging feasibility of quantum simulations which helps predict the properties of new molecules engineers will be able to consider molecule configurations that would otherwise be challenging to model this ability means that quantum computers will play an important role in accelerating current efforts in materials discovery and drug development third cyber security combinatorics have been central to encryption for over a thousand years alcohol's eighth century book of cryptographic messages looked at permutations and combinations of words today's encryption is still built on combinatorics emphasizing the assumption that combinatoric calculations are essentially unmanageable with quantum computing however cracking encryption becomes much easier which poses a threat to data security a new industry is growing that helps companies prepare for upcoming vulnerabilities in their cyber security fourth complex manufacturing quantum computers can be used in taking large manufacturing data sets on operational failures and translating them to combinatoric challenges that can identify which part of a complex manufacturing process contributed to incidents of product failure for products like microchips where this production process can have thousands of steps quantum can help reduce costly failures fifth financial services finance was one of the earliest domains to embrace big data and much of the science behind the pricing of complex assets such as stock options involves combinatoric calculation when financial firms price derivatives they usually apply a highly compute intensive calculation known as a monte carlo simulation which makes projections based on simulated market movements computing speed has long been a source of advantage in financial markets where hedge funds build complex infrastructure to get millisecond advantages in getting price information quantum computing will definitely help financial industry to make the next big leap forward we are entering a fascinating period in the development of quantum computers where a lot of industries will be disrupted in the years to come if you found this video useful i would appreciate it if you smash the like button also make sure to subscribe to the coding tech channel and click on the notification bell

Channel: Coding Tech

Views: 29,956

Keywords: quantum computer, quantum computing, quantum physics, quantum technology, superposition, quibits

Id: 6eJVVCO6GRM

Length: 8min 48sec (528 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021