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