Quantum Computers
As the news about the Google quantum processor "Willow" getting spread everywhere, I thought to write a blog about the quantum computers and their pro's and con's. Before reading this blog remember that I am not professional, so mistakes happen and please don't consider them.
Willow -"The Steppingstone for Quantum computing"
Google gave us a sudden surprise of reviling its prestige quantum processor willow. The specs of the willow are exceptionally good. For instance, this processor can solve a complex calculation in under five minutes, but our present fastest supercomputer takes around ten septillion years which is about freaking 10^24 years. Does that seem 'Willow' as game changer?
In 2019, Google achieved quantum supremacy with some skepticism. Now many tech giants are involved in this field such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon (with the help of Caltech university), Nvidia............etc
Qubits
Generally normal computers work with bits which is either 0 or 1, But quantum computer work with qubits which are both 0 and 1 at the same time. Sounds a bit different right?
Actually, it is like "Schrodinger cat", if you place a cat in a closed box with radioactive material and radioactive sensor which gives the poison to the cat when it exposes radioactivity. So, what is going to happen now? Does the cat is alive or dead? Schrodinger explained it by saying 'the cat is in both states alive and dead simultaneously until you open the box'. It is called quantum super position.
Same applies here too. Qubits or Quantum bits gives a quantum computer its superior computing power.
There are many physical objects that can be used as qubit such as a single photon, a nucleus or an electron. For instance, take electron as qubit, the 'spin' of the electron can have two states spin up or spin down.
If we take 2 electrons, then we get four different states like normal computer, but quantum mechanics allows us to make superposition on each one of the cases. I can give four numbers to the quantum computer but at most I can only give 2 numbers to the normal computer in this scenario. If I have n qubits then it contains 2^n classical bits.
But here gets the interesting part, as in the Schrodinger cat example when we open the box we see the cat in only one state. Here also I use the same analogy when I measure them the other part of the information is lost. So, we have to design the logical operations that you need does not get lost which is not trivial.
Does Quantum computers are replacement for Classical computers?
It is actually no. Surprised right? This is the biggest misconception that the world has now. Quantum computers are not universally faster they are only faster for special types of calculation where you can the fact that you have all these quantum superpositions at the same time, to do some computational parallelism. But it is a computer where the number of operations required to arrive at the result is exponentially high.
Pro's
- Certain problems can be solved quickly than the classical computers.
- AI (artificial intelligence) with this will be the deadly combo since they can process large database with ease.
- Research in various fields such as medical, astronomy, financial etc gets quicker.
Con's
- Their value is too high and the expenses to operate these in specific environment is a tougher job.
- The quantum processors which I have discussed earlier are prone to errors due to decoherence and noise. We are hoping to minimize these errors as far as possible.
- Cybersecurity is the thing which everyone should think. In matter of seconds these quantum computers can crack the firewalls of everything in the present world. So, to obtain dominance many countries, companies are trying to obtain this.
Conclusion
At last, I can conclude that it is all up to our will that we will use the new technology in the good way or bad way.
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