Quantum computing having a moment. But the technology is futuristic

It does not have a sum of artificial intelligence, but quantum calculation has its moment.

Some of the most powerful institutions in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM And the American government, spends many millions of dollars in the race to develop and build the first practical quantum computer.

Starting focused on quantum technology attracted about two billion dollars last year, according to a McKinsey & Co. ReportAs investors pile in the industry that could have almost 100 billion dollars in revenues within a decade.

There isn’t much work today today. In total, quantum computational companies were realized in revenue of $ 750 million in 2024 years, according to the same report.

But more and more, we hear a lot of breakthrough.

In the past year Microsoft precedent His first quantum chip, Google Managers said Technology can only be five years old, Amazon shown her quantum processor for troubleshooting and IBM stuck His plan to build a meaningful quantum by 2029. Years.

Joining them is the results of smaller companies and universities working on basic mathematics, software or potential business model. Some of the companies are still being traded and can see their supplies or crash based on the nucleus of news.

In January, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Sent Kuantum computer actions are wound When he said it was 15 years “on the early side”, given how long it would be useful before quantic calculation. He said that at the time was the time frame that “the whole crowd of the US believed.”

Two months later, he go back Comments, but also expressed surprise that moved markets or that there were more markets to be moved.

“How could the quantum company be public?” Huang said in March.

There is nothing right now that quantum computers can do. They are exclusively for research.

But the promise is clear. If the technology works, it can crush certain types of numbers and are in a traditional computer, whether it will be so impossible in a traditional computer, or it would take so much time that the universe is over before they are completed.

To imagine a quantum computer, you will basically change how you think it means calculating.

Traditional computer works because there are billions of transistors on each chip. These transistors can either be either zero or off. In large numbers, transistors can represent almost any number, refer to parts of the system of systems and to arithmetic. So do every computer in the world today.

In the quantum computer, the system uses cubits instead of transistors. It’s far more complex than those and zeros. Cubit include or excludes quantum mechanics are determined, and all cubits are “entangled”, which means that the change in one probability will affect the probability of others.

Cubita work can require significant infrastructure. For example, some quantum computers must be managed at very cold temperatures, near the absolute zero.

So far, there are many applications for a quantine with chemistry and physics simulation.

“Kuantum computers will not be calculated for each application, and that is fine,” said Christ of Svorne, Microsoft’s Vice President of Advanced Quantum Development. “Even if we use quantum computers for material science and chemistry, 96% of the world’s made in the world relies on chemistry and material science.”

Security researchers care about what they call K-dayor the day the effective quantum computer is created. They predict chaos when passwords and encryption start to misterely fail.

“In addition to its potential benefits, quantum calculation also represents significant risks to the United States economic and national security,” Biden white house is in 2022. years, in 2022. Years National Security Memorandum. Cryptographically relevant quantum computer “could jeopardize civil and military communication, sub-mining and control systems for critical infrastructure and defeat of security protocols for most online financial transactions,” Voltage said.

There is no practical application or algorithm that can be started on a quantum computer that cannot be achieved today on the normal digital computer based on silicon.

However, several groups say that they proved “quantum supremacy”, indicating that it will spend a problem on the quantum computer that would take far longer with the traditional computer. The actions were abstract.

Google was the first to declare quantum supremacy in 2019 years, describing his accomplishment of his quantum computer as “measure. “The task that performed was called a sampling of random circles, which is basically used only for testing quantum computers.

Google says that researchers gave random instructions for calculation to achieve the problem as complex under quantum mechanics. Her researchers could then show that the quantum computer is faster in decrypting quantum problems. Last year, Google said that her new, faster quantum computer computer has expanded the performance gap.

In terms of future applications in the real world, most of the potential for quantum computers are located in the areas of medicine, chemical and material research.

Google indicates drug detection or finding molecules that could be useful drugs. He also says that quantum computers will be able to do the science required for commercialization of fusion energy.

When Microsoft announced his first quantum chip in February, the company pointed out the science of chemistry and materials, as some materials corrode or how to compost plastics.

There is also some optimism that quantum computers will be suitable for generating training data for AI applications, especially for situations or problems with a huge number of potential solutions.

Google Explorer Maintains a website These catalogs many of the most prominent quantum algorithms.

Is most famous Brief algorithmWhich showed that the quantum computer will be able to find the main number of large numbers far faster than currently possible on the digital computer.

When the algorithm was discovered in 1994. year, he set fire to some concern from the world around the world. Many of them use the encryption method called RSA, which requires the processoring process of large numbers to make this secret data be maintained.

“Without effective mitigation, the influence of the opponent’s usage of the quantum computer could be pious [national security systems] and our nation, “Pentagon said 2021. years.

Microsoft recognized the national security factor and even framed quantum security as a race against China.

“While most believe that the United States still keeps the main place, we cannot afford to exclude the possibility of strategic surprise or that China may already be in parity with the United States”, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in the post in the blog in April.

The government has made an effort to expand encryption on so-called post-quantum methods, which cannot break the quantum computer. Companies such as Apple have already begun to integrate post-quantum encryption In your services like IMessage.

But past communications can still contain secrets. Intelligence agencies and other hackers often collect encrypted data in anticipation that one day can be deciphered.

For now, most of the work in quantite is still pretty academic.

Most advanced hardware companies today work on “error correction”, or various methods meant to reduce the number of errors and make them less harmful when it happens.

In today’s quantum computers, Kubits fail often as 1 of 1,000 times, according to Microsoft researchers. Microsoft said She managed to reduce the error rate for 1,000 times over a new approach.

In the past year, several improvements were announced, which is one of the reasons why researchers and engineers are becoming safer to be able to build a quantum computer.

The following address for address is a computer scaling.

Google’s new Will’s Chip has 105 cubits. Microsoft Mayonana Chip has eight. IBM’s stars plans to have 200 cubits. Amazon’s ocelot chip has 14 cubits. In the coming years, these numbers must go up. Google and Microsoft say that a really useful quantum computer will need a million cubits.

Watch: Kuantum computation reaches the request point