| Date | 5th, May 2022 |
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Quantum computers are advancing very rapidly. They are not dealing with ones and zeros as conventional computers, which should unlock much higher computing powers in the future.
There is a point in quantum computing development called quantum advantage – that’s when quantum computers will be able to solve problems classical computers find impossible. But scientists say we’re not there yet.
Quantum computers, using chips like this, one day will solve problems that are impossible to overcome for classical computers, but not yet. Image credit: Steve Jurvetson via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
A team of scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Copenhagen set out to investigate whether quantum computers in some specific applications can already outperform traditional machines. That is quite a big ask, even though quantum computers are quite awesome. The simple truth is that conventional computers can be extremely powerful with modern processors and software optimization. Outperforming them is not easy even for current and next-generation quantum computers.
Scientists wanted to see whether quantum computing’s noise rates would prevent the new systems from overtaking conventional machines. This is an important question, because quantum computers deal with probabilities a lot.
Scientists have created a technique to compare how classical algorithms and quantum algorithms performed on a quantum computer. Computers were tasked with finding the best solution from a large number of options. Results revealed that traditional computers can still outperform quantum machines in so-called optimisation problems. At the moment, the number of unavoidable imperfections in quantum algorithms is just too high.
Quantum computers draw their strength from quantum physics. They employ sub-atomic particles known as qubits to store data and could one day completely change the IT industry and how we see our computers in general. While conventional silicon chips understand data in a series of ones and zeros (binary code), qubits present a much larger range of values simultaneously. This will make computations faster, but at the moment the number of unavoidable mistakes remains too large.
Dr Daniel Stilck França, one of the authors of the study, said: “Quantum computers hold tremendous potential to solve problems that are out of reach for current technologies. But it is unclear how far the technology has to evolve before it finds useful applications. Our work provides much needed tools to understand when this transition will happen.”
That transition will happen. Quantum computers are being developed very rapidly, but conventional machines are very good. Some advanced error correction may change everything one day. Traditional computers are difficult to overtake and, therefore, quantum advantage is still quite a way off.
Source: University of Edinburgh
