If Quantum Computers Can’t Do More Than The Average Laptop, Then Why Should Businesses Bother?
Has your business considered the possibility of using quantum computers? Have your competitors considered the prospects? Get ready now. How? There are five courses of action you should embark upon. Namely, identify where quantum computing could help your business. Additionally, cultivating talent from lead quantum computing universities and building relationships with leaders in the industry are two valuable ideas. At this early stage in the quantum computing era, get on board or watch your competitors pull away from the station. More ideas and more reasons to start exploring quantum computing are found at the source, below. Because Quantum is Coming. Qubit.
The Quantum Computing Party Hasn’t Even Started Yet
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ The key to understanding quantum computers is that they are nothing like the computers we have now. Conventional computers are linear and deterministic. Double the number of transistors or bytes of memory, and you should expect to double the computing power. They represent data as distinct numbers and execute programs step-by-step. Quantum computers are parallel and probabilistic. Add a single quantum bit to the system and its power generally doubles. Information is represented as the odds that something might be true, and quantum algorithms can evaluate myriad potential scenarios at the same time.
[I]f your company deals with complexity—big or small—quantum computers may be the key to breakthrough discoveries and significant improvements in efficiency. But you’ll need completely new algorithms, written by people with very different skills than you have now.
+ [A]t IonQ… we used our first-generation machine to simulate a key measure of the energy of a water molecule. Why get excited when ordinary computers can handle the same calculation without breaking a sweat?
+ The excitement is what comes next. Water only has ten electrons to consider with just thousands of configurations. In a few years, more powerful hardware can use the algorithms we wrote to understand molecules with hundreds of electrons, having more configurations than there are atoms in the universe! Calculating properties of such molecules will be needed for breakthroughs in drugs, fertilizers, batteries, and other materials.
Source: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. Christopher Monroe, The Quantum Computing Party Hasn’t Even Started Yet…
Content may have been edited for style and clarity.
