Quantum computers are machines that use the properties of quantum physics to store data and perform computations. This can be extremely advantageous for certain tasks where they could vastly outperform even our best supercomputers.
Defining The Quantum Computer:
The Turing machine, developed by Alan Turing in the 1930s, is a theoretical device that consists of tape of unlimited length that is divided into little squares. Well in a quantum Turing machine, the difference is that the tape exists in a quantum state, as does the read-write head.
What this means is that the symbols on the tape can be either 0 or 1 or a superposition of 0 and 1. In other words the symbols are both 0 and 1 at the same time. While a normal Turing machine can only perform one calculation at a time, a Quantum Turing machine can perform many calculations at once.
Today’s computers, like a Turing machine, work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers are not limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in superposition.
Qubits represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their respective control devices that are working together to act as a computer memory and a processor. Since a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than todays most powerful supercomputers.
The superposition of qubits is what gives Quantum computers their inherent parallelism. According to physicists, this parallelism allows a quantum computer to work on a million computations at once, while your desktop pc works on one.
Note:- A 30-qubit-quantum computer would equal the processing power of a conventional computer that could run teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second). Todays typical desktop computers run at speeds measured in gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations).
Current Industry:
Several nations, giant tech firms, universities, and startups are currently exploring quantum computing and its range of potential applications.
IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies are investing heavily in developing large-scale quantum computing hardware and software.
Google and UCSB have a partnership to develop a 50 qubits computer, as it would represent 10,000,000,000,000,000 numbers that would take a modern computer petabyte-scale memory to store.
A petabyte is the unit above a terabyte and represents 1,024 terabytes. It is also equivalent to 4,000 digital photos taken every day. Meanwhile, names like Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Systems, 1Qbit Information Technologies, Inc., Quantum Circuits, Inc., QC Ware, Zapata Computing, Inc. are emerging as bigger players in quantum computing.
Good blog and nice explanation.
Thanks AMIT SINGH