Since 1959, when the American physicist Richard Freynman saw the possibility of using quantum effects in computing, his fellow physicists have been working with quantum algorithms and have created small amounts of quantum bits (qubits). But it was not until a few years ago that the thought of being able to develop a quantum computer is more a reality than science fiction. Building it, and making it commercially viable, is causing a bloody battle between big tech, and it remains to be seen who will get it and when.
Anne Matsuura, PhD in Physics from Stanford University and head of the Molecular and Quantum Technology area at Intel Labs, predicts that “we are a decade away from having a quantum computer, and that it will not look the same as a classic computer . It will be a machine that will not resemble any other built to date ”.
Already last year Intel was able to build, in tests, a 49-qubit quantum chip called “Tangle Lake”, but according to the American company itself, to achieve the commercial potential of quantum computing, the chips will require more than a million qubits . And this is the challenge for Intel manufacturing experts like Anne Matsuura and her team.
The promise of quantum technology is that its computing capacity will be exponentially greater, allowing it to solve some classic problems in the fields of electronic materials design, chemistry, medicine or drug design, for example. “Quantum computing may be a long-term project, but it has the potential to revolutionize the industry and have a huge impact on the world,” says Matsuura. Other scientists say that quantum computing will be the exponent that will lead artificial intelligence (AI) to developments that no one is capable of imagining.
It doesn’t seem like an “impossible” dream, so Intel physics compares and resembles its work to the mission of the boy trying to rebuild his father’s robot in the movie Hugo . “A quantum computer seems like an almost impossible machine, but we are making progress to build this magical technology.”
Less optimistic, or more realistic than Matsuura is Mikhail Lukin, a professor of physics at Harvard University, who recently pointed out in an interview published by the journal Nature that ” we still do not know what quantum computers will be for ” “It is believed.” he says, “that they will not necessarily help in all computational tasks, but there are problems that are mathematically difficult today for the best classical computers and that quantum computers will be able to solve.”
At the other end of the race to be the first to develop the quantum computer, a team that combines researchers from Microsoft and academics from the Niels Bohr Institute says they have found the key to creating a quantum computer. And for this they have taken a different path from that of their rivals such as Google, IBM or the aforementioned Intel. Scientists and physicists at Microsoft have used a subatomic particle to create qubits, the existence of which was first suggested in the 1930s by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana. Their belief is that this will lead to a much more stable qubit than those created by the methods their rivals use, and which they say are highly error-prone.
Microsoft seems confident that its years of research will pay off soon. “Five years from now,” says Julie Love, Microsoft’s director of quantum computing business development, “we will have a commercially relevant quantum computer, one that solves real problems like fighting climate change or creating new superconducting materials.” Love that with the new quantum equipment “problems that today would take to solve all the life of the universe with all the conventional supercomputers operating in parallel will be solved in seconds, hours or days.” Will then be the moment when artificial intelligence will surpass to the human?
