The State of Quantum Computing
I have said in the past people do not need to always go to cutting edge technology if what they have solves their purpose. If one has an address book on a computer and they can rate and retrieve addresses in a reasonable amount of time, would they need to purchase a new address book program? I would say the answer is no but if scientists were using powerful computers to solve problems than I would say the answer is yes, they should purchase a more powerful quantum computer if they could afford it. I think for most of us we have what we need if it’s something for home use on our computers. This compulsion to always have the fastest Internet and faster speeds on computers is really only for bragging rights for most of us. Scientists have set a mark in a chemistry problem using a conventional computer and they insist a quantum computer would have to past this mark to be of any value. Before a quantum computer can be recognized as superior to a classical computer, it has to be able to outdo the fastest classical supercomputer, which is not an easy task as classical computers are getting faster all the time. This benchmark was established by scientists using the fastest parallel computers and the supporters claim it would really be inspirational to see a quantum computer past this benchmark. It seems to me they feel this would mean quantum computers would become the computers of choice. Quantum computers use qubits which are just bits used by a quantum computer. They are the equivalent of bits in our classical computers. The reason quantum computing is exciting scientists so much is the fact instead of only two choices of on or off are available in our computing with classical computers, these are the zeros and ones, three choices are available in quantum computers. The choices are on, off or both. So, a quantum computer can demonstrate something not only as being on or off but also as on and off. I know this sort of fries our brains. Currently the quantum computers are subject to the number of qubits they can run on. The most powerful quantum computer today is said to be IBM’s fifty-three qubit computer. As the qubits increase these computers will become able to solve problems we haven’t even thought about yet because they are too complex for a classical computer These machines may eventually be able to tell us exactly how the universe formed and maybe even the number of planets in it. It is exciting to think that we could have a machine which might make unsolvable problems today easily solvable, it is said the IBM quantum computer has already solved at least one problem which conventional computing couldn’t. Today we are in a position with quantum computing which reminds me of the position we were in with classical computing before World War II. We have large machines which will look like a joke fifty years from now, when quantum computers might have thousands of qubits or even more. The machines probably will also start shrinking in size. One only has to look at what computers look like back then and a cell phone today to notice the incredible size differential and also the incredible power differential. There is a race going on today, it’s sort of reminds me of the space race in a way, in that different countries are competing with each other to build the fastest quantum computer. One country which seems to be pouring large sums of money into its quantum computer development is China. The head of Google has warned us about this. He also went on to say the Chinese might soon make tremendous progress and compromise the lead of the United States in this field. Here is what he said about that, "We are indeed most worried (about) an unknown competitor out of China to beat us in the race to (such a) machine because China as a society just has the ability to steer enormous resources in the directions that are deemed strategically important," China has already claimed they had sent an encrypted message which cannot be unencrypted except by them since they encrypted it using a quantum computer. Other countries are also interested in quantum computing such as Russia, South Korea, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan and this number will only increase in the future. Russia, is far behind in the quantum computer race. They have promised however to put in $790,000,000 into the project in the next five years. A Russian scientist said this was a real boost I will bring Russian quantum science to a world-class standard. In 2019 Japan had stated it was beginning a twenty year quantum computer program and their goal is to catch up to the United States and China. That same year South Korea announced a five year quantum computing development program. They are going to spend $40,000,000 on their project. Their aim is to develop a five qubit information unit with more than 90% reliability by 2023. It is important to note quantum computers have error correction programs built into them. Germany has taken a different route in developing a quantum computer. They have joined forces with IBM. IBM is now partners with Europe’s leading organization for applied research which is Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft which is a German company. This seems to indicate they will be privy to our advances in quantum computing. As I said there are other players, but the leaders are the United States with China a close second. It may be a long time before a private individual will be able to buy a quantum computer since the price would be too prohibitive. Even if they could buy one, they would find they wouldn’t know how to operate it, and it would take a lot of electricity and be very large.
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