Quantum Computer Technology

Currently, CPU development technology has almost reached a dead end. The transistor size is 7 nanometers, and it is almost impossible to develop smaller transistors. The way to develop a new generation of computers is to use a new field of science including the quantum computer.

Quantum technology is related to very small particles that has the following properties.

1. Superposition: The same atom has two states or it exists in two separate locations at once.
2. Entanglement: Quantum particles have “Spin” property. It can spin up and down. When quantum particles are joined or collapse, the two particles are entangled, shooting a photon to split the particles, or shooting a single photon into the separator. When one is observed to be +, the other will always be observed to be – “immediately”, even though they are spatially separated. Albert Einstein called this phenomenon as “Spooky action at a distance” which means two particles may interact instantaneously over a distance (EPR paradox).

Spin in quantum is used instead of “Bit” in the classical computer, also known as qubit or quantum bit. 1 qubit is equal to 2ⁿ. In the Google I/O, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO announced that Google built a 53-qubit quantum computer using a superconductor processor named “Sycamore” to reduce temperature up to 20 mK (milli-Kelvin) or -273.13 Celsius and create qubit states with superconductor conditions. This will generate electrical energy for electrons to form quantum superposition state or to spin 0 and 1 repetitively and quickly so that it took only 200 seconds to execute the algorithm of Schrödinger-Feynman which IBM’s supercomputer would take 10,000 years to process. (Anyway, IBM has argued that the supercomputer takes only two and a half days to process and it requires a hard disk to write very large results.)

China also built a quantum computer named “Jiuzhang” using a different method. It uses a photon beam alignment tool or quantum computational advantage using photons, consisting of 300 beam splitters, 75 mirrors, Gaussian Boson sampling, capable of processing within 200 seconds which is 2.5 billion years faster than the supercomputer.

If quantum computer can actually be used, there may be both merits and demerits. In term of benefits, we can use quantum computers in machine learning processing. Big data can be utilized to create a prediction model within a few seconds. As for medical benefits, we can use quantum computers to process DNA data for generating the appropriate medicine for each patient. Moreover, it can detect and discriminate cancer cells in just a few seconds.

On the other hand, the problem that might occur if quantum computers can actually be used is that it could decrypt the global financial transactions in seconds. That means a hacker can use quantum computers to hack the money all over the world within less than an hour, even though your money is protected in a crypto wallet which is very secured.

However, quantum computer technology is currently under research. It is expected to be practical application in the next 50 years or sooner but it is probably not within 10 years or 20 years.