IBM has announced a milestone in its race against Google and other big tech firms to build a powerful quantum computer.
Dario Gil, who leads IBM's quantum computing and artificial intelligence research division, said that the company's scientists have successfully built and measured a processor prototype with 50 quantum bits, known as qubits.
Quantum computing, a technology that is still in its early phases, uses the quirks of quantum physics to perform calculations at far higher speeds than current computers.
IBM still has glitches to work out but the 50-qubit announcement is a sign of significant progress.
While technologies like AI can find pattern buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be found and the number of possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous ever to be processed by classical computers.
A quantum computer is a completely different kind of computer. Rather than operating with bits that can only equal zeroes and ones like a regular computer, its bits, or “qubits,” equal zero. A user initializes these qubits, which is sort of like setting the weights on a weighted die, and then they interact via the mathematical rules of quantum mechanics. There are certain tasks, like factoring numbers and modeling molecules, where a quantum computer would be much faster than a regular computer. Today, each of these qubits are made from specially fabricated electronics that must be held at temperatures near absolute zero.
These quantum computers still have very short “coherence times”. IBM’s 20 qubit offering loses its ability to perform quantum calculations after only 90 microseconds.
-Ria Vats
CSE, II year
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