December 7th, 2020 - Are You Ready for Quantum Computing?

In the world of quantum computing, 2020 turned out to be a breakthrough year. Engineers all over the planet used this technology to solve problems in medicine, science, engineering, and even chess matches. It is safe to say that qubit technology is here to stay but the vast majority of the population has no idea what this means or how it will change their lives. Let's take this time to quickly go over qubit technology and how it will change the world as we know it.

Quantum computing is a new type of computing designed to tackle the complex problems that modern computing power is too limited to touch. While modern computing has improved by leaps and bounds over the last few decades, there are still problems that are just too large and too complex for it to solve. Through the use of quantum mechanics, the computing power of a quantum computer scales exponentially with the number of qubits of the system.

With classical computational systems, you have data coming in that exists in two states, On or Off (1 or 0). A piece of data with two states is known as a binary digit or a bit. In a quantum computer, you can have data coming in that exists in the same two states as a normal bit but that can also exist in both states or any proportion of those states simultaneously. This is known as a quantum superposition state. A quantum bit is more commonly known as a qubit.

Given the sheer amount of information contained in a qubit, one of the main advantages of quantum computing is the time needed to solve problems. Classical computation methods solve the same problems as a quantum computer, but the main drawback of these methods is the time they need to complete the calculation. Thanks to quantum computing, hopefully in the future classical problems as well as more complex problems could be solved in a fraction of the time.

There are some issues that current methods of quantum computing must deal with, however. With modern computing, we can see data as it exists, as either 1 or 0. We can manipulate and use the information of a bit as we see fit and doing so should not alter it unless we choose to do so. With quantum mechanics, however, observing or interacting with a bit in a superposition state will effectively destroy it and the data becomes a classical bit of information again.

Please feel free to contact Berkeley Nucleonics at (800) 234-7858 or info@berkeleynucleonics.com with any questions.