Breaking free from computing limits
Quantum’s promise of ultrafast calculations, combined with tech giants Google and IBM hogging the headlines, may make it seem like computing is all that quantum can do. But as researchers learn to control and manipulate their properties, quantum applications are extending beyond the realm of information processing.
For one, it has enabled us to achieve an elusive state called quantum supremacy, wherein a quantum computer solves a calculation that no classical computer can. After all, exceptionally large datasets require faster processing and greater working memory than what classical computers can provide.
In quantum computers, connected qubits form vast, multidimensional spaces for holding all the data and representing complex problems in their entirety. Because pattern-finding is a matter of running through all possible combinations, quantum computers can perform complex operations in seconds. Multiple qubits scour the data simultaneously as opposed to classical computers that can only check one solution at a time.
While there have been mixed claims about achieving quantum supremacy, progress is quickly being made to develop scalable quantum processors. Currently, the most advanced applications—like Google’s 50-qubit Sycamore or IBM’s transmon qubit systems with lower noise sensitivity—fall under noisy intermediate-scale quantum, because they haven’t broken through some hardware limitations and aren’t fully error-free just yet.
However, these computing services have now become accessible to researchers globally, and are available for remote use in approved projects to push quantum computing to its most optimized state.
Can you keep a quantum secret?
In the digital era, we communicate through transferring data—whether in the form of letters, pixels or sound. As internet use escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime rates also shot up six-fold globally.
But while increasing digitalization can result in increased threats to data privacy, quantum-secured communication can help safeguard these connections. Developments in quantum communications currently focus not only on transmitting qubits reliably across long distances, but also ensure that the networks built are unhackable.
To protect against security breaches, quantum key distribution (QKD) encrypts data by turning plain text like the words you see now into random codes with no identifiable pattern. Only the two entangled parties know the secret keys to decipher and encode the messages transmitted.
QKD systems from Japanese company Toshiba, for example, are already available for deployment, sending 100 gigabytes of data per second over a 100 km fiber connection.
