To celebrate World Quantum Day (April 14), we are highlighting this post from ScIU’s archives! It was originally published by AJ Rasmusson in July 2019.
Tech companies are going big in a microscopic way, pouring millions of dollars into a new form of computing: quantum computing. Quantum computers will revolutionize drug research, material discovery, and artificial intelligence by solving complex problems in a new way. To understand this, let’s review how normal computers solve problems and compare this to how a quantum computer would do it.
Today’s computers use billions upon billions of 0’s and 1’s, called bits, to represent information like numbers, words, images, etc. To watch a movie or simulate life-saving chemical reactions in medicine, a processor in the computer takes a group of bits and modifies them according to programmed instructions. For example, to watch Avengers: Infinity War, your computer processes more than 16 billion bits. By repeating this process very quickly, your computer can turn a file of 0’s and 1’s into moving images on your display or store answers to complex math equations in a new file.
Quantum computers take a different approach to information processing. Instead of solving a problem one outcome at a time, a quantum computer computes every possible outcome simultaneously. To understand the power of that statement (and what it even means), let’s consider an example. (more…)