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Quantum computer is the
application of Quantum Physics phenomenons like quantum superposition and quantum
entanglement. A quantum computer is believed to be faster than the classical
computer and a quantum computer also has more storage capacity.
So why not continue with
classical computer ? What is the difference between quantum computer and
classical computer ? Classical computer has come to the physical limit of how
small we can make the electronic components, used in computer. Electronic
components have already reduced to the size of a few atoms. At this size
problems of quantum tunnelling appears where electrons disappear and reappear
without any visible reason. So this gave birth to quantum computer science and
quantum computer. What is a quantum computer ? How does a quantum computer work
? Quantum computer uses quantum bit (qubit or qbit) as its basic unit of
quantum information (instead of 0 or 1 as in classical computer). A qubit can
have both the value of 0 and 1 at the same time (known as Quantum
superposition) unless measured or observed. So a memory consisting of ‘n’ bits
of information has 2(to the power ‘n’) possible states(states are like the spin
of an electron or polarization of a photon, etc). Thus we can see that a
quantum computer has immense storage capacity. These states can be plugged into
different algorithm to obtain the final outcomes. As regard to quantum computer
vs supercomputer, it is believed that the quantum computer will be better than
supercomputer. Quantum computer speed is faster than classical computer because
the number of processes required to arrive at a result is immensely reduced.
Quantum computer
applications are as follows. Firstly, with regard to cyber security, the
quantum entanglement phenomenon can help. As any change in one member of the
entangled pair can change the other member of the pair. Thus if anyone reads
the encrypted message, it will be known by the receiver . Secondly, quantum
simulation can help to simulate many phenomenon which would be difficult to
simulate in classical computer. Thirdly, quantum supremacy, which is a
hypothetical speed advantage that quantum computers will have has wide spread
applications like search engines etc.
Quantum computer decoherence
or loss of coherence is the destruction of the quantum properties of the
quantum computer due to temperature fluctuations, vibrations, electromagnetic
waves and other interactions with the environment. Thus quantum computer
programming is difficult and building quantum computer is full of challenges.
Quantum computer will ultimately be a necessity as we are approaching the physical limits of electronic components, after which quantum mechanics and quantum problems will come into play. However we have to develop quantum computers quickly, otherwise development of computing will come to a stagnating point.
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