The Era of Quantum Computing

[Music]

have you ever thought about what you

could do if you were given a chance to

go back in time

and time to say prepare yourselves for

the internet

this is what’s happening with quantum

computing now and you’re given the

opportunity to do something big about it

what we see in our daily lives and how

we see things work

differ greatly from the world of quantum

one thing that i want you to walk away

today from this talk

is that we might not be able to see

quantum

but we will need quantum to understand

the world we live in

before you start to wander and start

thinking about how abstract this idea

can be

think about how we already use both

classical and quantum physics in our

everyday lives

we currently make use of information

that is encoded into classical systems

like our smartphones our computers

through the internet

satellites and the way we build these

systems respond to our increasing needs

to process data

with quality and accuracy in real time

we benefit from classical computing

every day

we process patterns from data that are

stored and manipulated in systems

but there is a huge constraint with the

compute power we have today

the chips that run on your computers

smartphones and electronics are becoming

so

small with increasing power that will

soon be hitting a physical limit to

building

better and faster systems

problems like designing new molecules

and drug discovery

or finding the most optimized route in

logistics

problems that grow so large in size

where our computers and even the world’s

fastest super computers are not able to

solve and process this amount of

information

we would need years or even a timeline

that is beyond our lifetime to compute

and find solutions to these problems

this is why we need an entirely

different and new breed of computers to

understand the complex world we live in

and bring us past the limitations of

classical computing we have today

our world is ultimately made up of these

small building blocks like

electrons and the atoms we know of but

do not see

and because the fundamental laws of

physics is quantum mechanical

nature can only be explained at a very

small scale

with quantum which governs the behavior

of particles that are not visible to the

human eye

we know a lot about classical bits where

strings of information are processed

on current classical computers in zeros

and ones

quantum computing uses quantum

mechanical properties of superposition

and entanglement to do the same except

using

what we call qubits

and instead of processing things one

after another

qubits can store and process a huge

amount of information

in combinations of multiple states at

once imagine if you were given a problem

with millions of different pathways of

finding the solutions

and instead of solving this with one

trial after another

as with classical bits you can

try out all possible pathways and

perform the calculations simultaneously

saving both time and resources

as well as finding the results more

accurately and effectively

one way we can fabricate these qubits is

to have them manipulated in an

isolated encoded then space environment

to maintain the superposition and

entanglement properties

which are only available in a subatomic

quantum space

and because of how we can use these

properties to process information

potential speed ups and solving problems

that scale to exponentially large

values quantum computers will be more

powerful than anything possible with a

classical computer

we’ve been hearing the word quantum a

lot today

well of course we are on the topic of

quantum computing

small scale operating at extremely low

temperatures to maintain quantum states

can’t be observed with the visible eye

so how exactly will quantum computers

impact

our lives to better understand this

the goal of quantum information is to

find out what properties the information

has and how these properties can be put

into new and remarkable uses

the compute power will allow for new

breakthroughs and advances across

all industries for example in medicine

to diagnose illnesses in a quicker

manner

developing faster search algorithms to

direct resources effectively

in say supply chain

in finance to create machine learning

models to optimize portfolios

and even understanding the nitrogen

fixation process we

we don’t know about today better and

create fertilizers which currently uses

an estimate of one to two percent of the

world’s energy consumption

to ultimately address sustainability and

climate change

or even looking into something that is a

little closer to our hearts right now in

light of this pandemic

is that designing a drug requires

massive amounts of computational

resources

that would take more than the entire

universe to perform on a classical

computer

and take millions or even billions of

years to identify the right molecules

which in comparison could take just days

or hours on a quantum computer

quantum technology seems so distant a

century ago

where we are now very lucky to be in an

era where the world’s first quantum

computer was put

on the cloud for free public access in

2016 by ibm

and developments are happening so

rapidly at a rate where we can possibly

see advantages of quantum

over classical in the next few years

with a roadmap of over a hundred a

thousand cubit quantum computer in 2023

this will still be relatively small to

tap into the full potential of quantum

computing

but large enough to maintain the logical

qubits for a significant milestone in

developing a full-scale quantum computer

we’re seeing billions of quantum

circuits executed on the ibm quantum

cloud around the world

an increasing number of papers being

written

hundreds of university courses have

included quantum in their education

and fortune 500 companies government

startups academia and national labs are

working together to accelerate research

develop commercial applications as well

as educating and preparing the industry

for this era

the biggest challenge in quantum

computing right now is to build a fault

tolerant quantum computer to be able to

solve

all these problems it’s not just about

how many qubits you can fit on a quantum

computer

the system also has to take into account

error correction

to the noisy environment of these

machines

to encode the data with sufficient

fidelity maintaining the isolated

sub-zero temperatures

how the qubits are entangled as well as

many other factors contributing to the

computational power of a quantum

computer

this is why on top of the hardware the

companies are already building

the software and algorithms developed to

run circuits and explore applications

have equal significance at this stage

there is a huge community contributing

and working on

exploring the different potential use

cases

developing software writing algorithms

error correcting methods and different

applications

what we need now is to hire talents from

designing hardware

to the developing software and business

leaders leaders need to be

prepared for this era quantum

technologies are being invested heavily

across the world

there will be solutions and use cases

that we haven’t thought of yet

this hopefully gives you an insight of

where quantum is at now

and how you can get started today to

contribute and equip skills that you

need for this exciting era what will you

do with quantum computers