The crazy thing is, qubits can also achieve a mixed state, called a “superposition” where they are both 1 and 0 at the same time. Quantum computing relies on quantum bits, or “qubits”, which can also represent a 0 or a 1. Regular computers are based on “bits” – imagine them as little switches pointing to either a 1 or a 0. If precedent is any guide, we’ve yet to imagine what the uses of quantum computers will be. Consider that in 1943, Thomas Watson, the president of IBM said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Now there are five in every household. They could be great at building models to predict the future, such as in long-term weather forecasting.īut ultimately, the uses of quantum computing are unpredictable.
Quantum computers could also be fantastic at recognising patterns in data – useful for machine learning problems, such as being able to identify different objects in an image. Using Shor’s algorithm, a quantum computer could perform the task in a few hours.
All a regular computer can do is try every possibility one after another – a task that could take billions of years. While quantum computers were once an academic curiosity, interest exploded in 1994 when the American mathematician Peter Shor found a way to use quantum computers to break codes.Ĭurrently, many online security systems run on the principle that it’s next to impossible to take a very large number and figure out what its prime factors are. Chemists, for example, could accurately model drug interactions and biologists could study all the possible ways proteins can fold and interact with one another. The first practical idea, proposed by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1981, was to use a quantum computer to simulate quantum mechanics. They will probably be most useful for government agencies, research and development companies and universities in solving problems that current computers struggle with. So what could a quantum computer be used for? (This is where the codebreaking comes in – see below.) But for most jobs, a quantum computer would be little better than a regular computer. There are a few specific tasks – such as factoring very large numbers – which a quantum computer would be amazing at. A quantum computer is not just a “faster” computer.
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This makes them, in some cases, exponentially faster than any regular computer.įor example, one quantum computer could easily crack the codes that keep internet banking secure. Quantum computing is the idea that we can use this quantum rule-breaking to process information in a new way-one that’s totally different from how regular computers work. But tiny quantum objects – such as electrons, or photons of light – can break those rules. What is quantum computing? Regular computers operate according to strict rules of logic.