International Business Machines Corp.’s (NYSE:IBM) researchers have made a prototype circuit that might become the basis of quantum computing. The circuit is an assemblage of 4 super cooled superconducting parts called qubits. These qubits check for critical errors that make quantum chips very difficult to make. The research work is to be released on Wednesday in a paper published in Nature Communications.
Chips today are piled on top of one another, in line with the Moore’s Law. However, it is becoming harder and harder to do as there is a limit to how many the chips can be shrunk. It is here that the quantum chips become important.
According to SupratikGuha, a director at IBM Research, Moore’s Law will no longer be valid a decade hence. In such a scenario, the industry will have to find new ways to deliver the break neck speed of growth that the was seen in the last 50 years.
IBM is betting on quantum computers to the next big step that takes computing beyond the traditional or classical. Quantum computing could help unlock the next generation of data analysis, encryption, machine learning and scientific research. Last year, International Business Machines Corp.’s (NYSE:IBM) announced that it would spend $3 billion in the research of on semiconductors including quantum computing.
Researchers at IBM believe that a machine capable of computing hundreds of qubits could be made in five to ten years. It is, however, unknown how long it would take for quantum machines to replace conventional computers.
The classical computing is dependent on data that form either one or zero. Quantum bits, on the other hand, can be both one or zero at one time. This is called superposition and is the key behind the computing power of a computer.
A Quantum computer cold be programmed to mine through incredible amounts of data or crack the most powerful encryptions of today.
