A few days ago, The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a leading college in science and engineering, received Quantum System One, the first quantum computer for university research. This quantum computer uses IBM’s Eagle processor consisting of 127 qubits (quantum bits), as opposed to classical bits and transistors in classical computers. “Today we are headed even deeper into the future.” said RPI President Marty A. Schmidt. Quantum computers have been in development for over 20 years now, but this is the first sign of exponential progress in the field as they continue to evolve and achieve unprecedented capabilities.
Unfortunately, not everyone is celebrating. While quantum computers are fantastic at simulation and could revolutionize processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, they could also jeopardize modern encryption. Through relatively simple modular arithmetic and algebra, quantum computers are able to find the extremely large prime numbers that are used to encrypt data. Although this outcome is unlikely to be immediate, it is an eventuality. “Nothing can be done to protect the confidentiality of encrypted material that was previously stored by an adversary,” says the National Institute of Technology.
For all the downsides, the benefits could revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry. Since they are extremely good at simulation, they have a potential future in discovering new medicines. Current algorithms used by classical computers in the medical field are reaching their limits. With quantum computers, though, chemical analysis that could take nearly a hundred years could potentially be done in a matter of hours or even minutes when developed enough. “To deal with this complexity future machine learning programs will require computational power of quantum computing to deliver results in real time,” says a research team at Saint Louis University.
While the potential of quantum computers is massive, they will not be replacing our classical computers and will probably rarely be used by the average person.“Quantum computers aren’t faster than classical processing, they are a different way of programming,” says Laure Le Bars, a research director at SAP, a major software company. “They deliver far greater efficiencies than classical computing for some optimization algorithms. For instance, being able to simulate climate change models with granularity all at once across millions of industry variables that impact CO2 emissions would result in more informed predictions to better guide sustainable strategies long term.”
While we are unsure of what will happen with quantum computing, a new revolution in development and simulation is on the horizon, and the research for it begins now.
