Q
subject until 1994, when Shor showed that a QC could
In a conventional computer, information is represented
by quantities that obey the laws of classical physics,
such as the voltage levels in a logic circuit. But as the
size of microelectronics shrinks, the underlying quan-
tum physics will eventually become important. In the
early 1980s this observation led Benioff and later Feyn-
man to consider how to compute with information
represented by quantum mechanical quantities. For
example, an atomic electron has certain quantum
states of motion with energies that are discrete or
quantized. An electron in one of these states could be
used to represent a binary 0 and when it is ina second,
to represent a binary 1. A two-state quantum system
that is used to store a single bitof information has come
to be known as a qubit. (Other examples of qubits
include: the two distinct polarizations of a photon or
single particle of light; and the orientation of the intrin-
sic angular momentum or spin of an atomic nucleus,
which can be either parallel or antiparallel to an
applied magnetic field.)
With two or more qubits it becomes possible to con-
sider quantum logical “gate” operations in which the
state of one qubit changes in a way that is contingent
upon the state of another. These gate operations are
the buildingblocks of a quantum computer (QC).
Quantum computation remained a largely abstract
find the prime factors of composite integers much
more efficiently than any conventional computer.
Because integer factorization and related problems
that are computationally intractable with conventional
computers are the basis for the security of modern
public key cryptosystems, Shor’s result has turned
quantum computation into a subject whose feasibility
is now a veryactive research field.The practical
realization of a QC is still in its infancy, but current
experiments are producing encouraging results.
The logic gates in a QC are effected through quantum
mechanical interactions between the qubits. Because
the laws of nature arereversible in time, the logic oper-
ations themselves must also be reversible.Although
many conventional logic operations are not reversible
(e.g. neither a nor b can be recovered from the value
of a v b), those required for quantum computation
can be performed reversibly. Forexample, the input to
a NOT gate can be recovered by feeding the output
through a second NOT gate. Another fundamental
reversible two-bit gate is the controlled-NOT or CNOT
gate, in which a “control” bit and a “target” bit enter
the gate and the target bit emerges XORed with the
control bit, but the control bit emerges unchanged
[and b can be recovered since b = a @ ( a @ b ) ] . (With
the NOT operation, the CNOT and a third reversible
gate known as controlled-controlled-NOT[from which
c = ( a A b) 8 ( ( aA b) 8 c)] , it is possible to perform
any Boolean operation; see Fig. 1.) A computer based
on these quantum operations would not necessarily be
particularly powerful or fast. However, the real power
1494 QUANTUM COMPUTING
NOT
a t\ a
Controlled-NOT
a a
b 1 aeb
Controlled-controlled-NOT
a a
Figure 1. A set of three universal reversible Boolean logic gates,
for which the input bit values (a, b, c) can be
recovered from the output values by a second
application of the same logic gate. All of the arithmetic
functions for conventional computation can be
constructed from this set of gates. The curved arrows
represent the qubit in one of its two possible states.
of a QC would arise from the ability to perform much
more general quantum gate operations that are not
limited to theconventional Boolean operations of ordi-
nary computers.
It is one of the most counterintuitive features of quan-
tum physics that, at theatomic scale, material systems
can behave with wavelike properties and exhibit the
phenomenon of superposition, so thata qubit in a
superposition state has aspects of both 0 and 1 simul-
taneously. Of course, once measured, aqubit in a super-
position state will always be found to have a definite
0 or 1 value, with only the probability of each result
being predictable by quantum mechanics, and deter-
mined by the amount of each component in the super-
position. For example, quantum physics predicts that
a horizontally propagating photon prepared with its
polarization oriented at 45” to the vertical will pass
through avertically oriented polarizer with 50% proba-
bility and fail with 50% probability. (Superpositions are
also the origin of the intrinsically probabilistic nature of
quantum computation.) In 1986 Deutsch realizedthat
a QC could exploit this distinctly nonclassicalphenom-
enon of quantum superposition with a sort of contin-
uously-valued (non-Boolean) logic to provide massive
computational parallelism. In a QC a single-qubit oper-
ation can be used to prepare a superposition state.
Similarly, with only M single-qubit operations, one for
each qubit in the register, an n-qubit register could be
prepared in a superposition of all possible 2”’values at
once, providing a highly parallel memory.
The efficiency with which multi-qubit superpositions
couldbe created in a QC also extends to the com-
putation of functions. If we consider calculating a func-
tion that takes values on arguments from 0 to 2’ - we
could create a single argument value in the n-qubit
’,
register and then create thefunction’svalue ina second
register with appropriate quantum logic gates. But
using instead a superposition of all 2n values in the argu-
ment register, a single application of the same quantum
logic gates would create all 2”’ values of the function
in superposition in the second register. (In contrast, on
any conventional computer, even a parallel one, the
values would haveto be computed individually.) This
“quantum parallelism” apparently allows an exponen-
tial amount of computational work ina single quantum
operation, but if we are interested in the function
values themselves, this feature of a QC is not directly
useful because only a single value of the function is
obtained on measurement. However, for certain prob-
lems where we are interested in some common prop-
erty shared by all the values of the function, such as its
period, the power of quantum parallelism can be har-
nessed using another nonclassical feature of quantum
physics: quantum interference. Just as two waves can
interfere constructively, when in-phase, to produce a
stronger wave or destructively, when out of phase, to
cancel each other out, thesuperposition states within a
QC can be manipulated to produce constructive inter-
ference at correct answers and destructive interference
at incorrect ones. The Fourier transformation is the
natural mathematical device for such manipulations,
and in 1994Shor showed how non-Boolean operations
could be usedto perform a quantumFourier transform
(QFT) operation, with exponentially fewer operations
thanthe classicalfast Fourier transform. His QFT
could be usedto find the period of a function efficiently
on a QC, and he related the problem of factoring an
integer to a periodicity problem, showing that factor-
ing could be solved efficientlyon a quantumcomputer.
To put Shor’s algorithm in perspective, during 1994 a
129-digit number known as RSA- 129 was factored in
8 months, requiring lo” instructions performed on
over 1,000 networked computers (see COOPERATIVE
COMPUTING). But a QC with a clock speed of 100 MHz
could have factored this number in a few seconds,
requiring a memory of about 2,000 qubits and IO9
quantum logic gates. Furthermore,the number of

quantum gates required to factor even larger numbers
grows as only a polynomial function of the number of
digits in the number being factored: a 250-digit number
would only require about 10 times as many quantum
logic gates. In contrast, conventional factoring algo-
rithms have a muchfaster growth: a 250-digit number
would require a factoring time of about lo7 years by
extrapolation from the RSA-129 result. The power of
quantum parallelism becomes even clearer if we con-
sider trying to simulate Shor’s algorithm on a conven-
tional computer: for factoring RSA-129 wewould
require 22,000memory bits.
At present there are only a few algorithms known in
which quantum parallelism could provide an advan-
tageover conventional computation. Shor has also
invented a quantumalgorithm to solve the discrete log-
arithm problem: given a prime number, p , and integer
g < p and another integer y < p , find the integer x ,
such that gx = ymodp. Like factoring, this problem is
computationally intractable on conventional comput-
ers and forms the basis for another class of public-key
cryptosystems. The quantum factoring and discrete
logarithm algorithms are particular instances of one
class of quantum algorithms. Another classis based on
Grover’s quantum algorithm that finds a “marked”
element in an unstructured database more efficiently
than aclassical computer. One of the most activeareas
of research in quantum computation is to understand
the general nature of problems that are amenable to
efficient solution on a QC.
A serious obstacle to practical quantum computation
is the propensity for qubit superpositions of 0 and 1 to
“decohere” into either 0 or 1. (This phenomenon of
decoherence is invoked to explain why macroscopic
objects are never observed in quantum superposition
states.) However, over the past two years there have
been breakthroughs in generalizingconventional error
correction concepts to correct decoherence in a QC.
A single logical bit would be encoded as the state of
several qubits and quantum gate operations used to
correct decoherence errors through a “majority vote.”
Moreover, these ideas have been shown to allow robust
or fault-tolerant quantum computation with the en-
coded logical bits. It is now known that if a certain
threshold precision per gate operation can be achieved,
quantum error correction would allow a QC to com-
pute indefinitely.
The requirements for practical quantum computing are
simply stated but very demanding in practice. Firstly, a
quantum register of multiple qubits must be prepared
in an addressable form and isolated from environmen-
tal influences which cause the delicate quantum states
to decohere. Secondly, although weakly coupledto the
outside world, the qubits must nevertheless be strongly
QUANTUM COMPUTING 1495
coupled together through an external drive in order to
perform logic-gate operations. Thirdly, there must be a
read-out method to determine the state of each qubit at
the end of the computation. (In the quantum world
measurement can be problematic.) At present, two
hardware schemes have been used to demonstrate
the basic operations of a QC with existing technology:
the manipulation of nuclear spin qubits using nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) methods; and photon
polarization qubits manipulated with conventional
linear optical elements. With these systemsseveral
logic operations with up to three qubits have been
demonstrated, and even very simpleinstances of quan-
tum algorithms, such as searching a four-element data-
base using Grover’s algorithm have been performed.
Although these systems will continue to be very useful
for exploring the basics of quantum computation
during the next few years, neither of them scales up
easily to more thanabout 10 qubits. To go beyond this
limit will require the use of other technologies now
under development, such as laser manipulation of elec-
tronic energylevelsin trapped ions and controlled
quantum states of the electromagnetic field in micro-
cavities. Single quantum logic operations have been
demonstrated in both of these technologies. Estimates
suggest that the trapped ion scheme should be par-
ticularly promising, with a computational potential of
30 or more qubits and many thousands of logic opera-
tions. Ion trap QCs should allow quantum computation
to be developed into the realm where simulation of
quantum computation on conventional computers is
impossible. Even so, the computational capacity of an
ion trap QC would allow the factoring of only small
numbers. The long-term future of QC is therefore likely
to involve solid-state schemes, although these are cur-
rently at a much earlier stage of development than the
ion traps. A particularly promising silicon-based QC
concept, which might allow large-scale quantum com-
putation and industrial fabrication techniques, was
proposed in 1998. This scheme is now under active
development. However, the extrapolation to computa-
tionally significant problems is so great that it will be
several years before the practical potential of quantum
computation can be reliably assessed. Quantum com-
putation is not only a new computational paradigm, but
also opens up new perspectives on quantum physics.
The future promises to be exciting forboth fields.
Bibliography
1994. Shor, P. W. “Algorithms for Quantum Computation:
Discrete Logarithm and Factoring,”in Proceedings of the 35th
Annual Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science
(ed. S. Goldwasser), 124. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE.
1995. Lloyd, S. “Quantum Mechanical Computers,” Scientific
American, 273, 4, (October), 140-145.
1496 QUEUEING THEORY
1996. Ekert, A. K., and Josza, R. “Quantum Computation and
Shor’s Factoring Algorithm,”Reviews of Modern Physics, 68,
733-753.
1996. Feynman,R. P. “The Feynman Lectures on Computation”
(eds. A. J. G. Hey and R. W. Allen). Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
1996. Grover,L. K. “A Fast Quantum Mechanical Algorithm for
Database Search,” in Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM
Symposium on the Theory of Computing. New York: ACM.
1998. Gershenfeld, N., and Chuang, I. L. “Quantum Computing
with Molecules,” Scientific American, June, 66.
1999. Hey, A. J. G. (ed.) Feynman and Computation, Reading,
MA: Perseus.
Richard J. Hughes
QUEUEING THEORY
A queue is a waiting line (like customers waiting at a
supermarket checkout counter); queueingtheory is
the mathematical theory of waiting lines. More gener-
ally, queueing theory is concerned with the mathemat-
icalmodeling and analysis of systems that provide
service to random demands. A queueing model is an
abstract description of such a system. Typically, a
queueing model represents (1) the system’s physical
configuration, by specifying the number and arrange-
ment of the servers, which provide service to the cus-
tomers, and (2) the stochastic (that is, probabilistic or
statistical) nature of the demands, by specifying the
variability in the arrival process and in the service
process.
For example, in the context of computer communica-
tions, a communications channel might be a server,
and the messages the customers; the (random) times at
which messages request the use of the channel would
be the arrival process, and the (random) lengths of
service time that the messages hold the channel while
being transmitted would constitute the service process.
Another example is a computer system where a pro-
grammer (customer) sitting at a terminal requests
access to a CPU (server) for the processing of a trans-
action; both the arrival time of the request for access
and the amount of processing time requested are ran-
dom. Then, the mathematical analysis of the models
would yield formulas that presumably relate the phys-
ical and stochastic parameters to certain performance
measures, such as average waiting time, server utili-
zation, throughput, probability of buffer overflow, etc.
The art of applied queueing theory is to construct a
model that is simple enough so that it yields to mathe-
matical analysis, yet contains sufficient detail so that
its performance measures reflect the behavior of the
real system.
Queueing theory was born in the early 1900s with the
work of A. K. Erlang of the Copenhagen Telephone
Company, who derived severalimportant formulas for
teletraffic engineering that still bear his name today.
The range of applications has grown to include not only
telecommunications and computer science, but also
manufacturing, air traffic control, militarylogistics,
design of themeparks, and many other areas that
involve service systems whose demands are random.
Queueing theory is considered to be one of the stan-
dard methodologies (together with linear program-
ming, simulation, etc.) of operations research and
management science, and is standard fare in academic
programs in industrial engineering, manufacturing
engineering, etc., as well as in programs in telecom-
munications, computer engineering, and computer
science. There are dozens of books and thousands of
papers on queueing, and they continue to be published
at an ever-increasing rate. But, despite its apparent
simplicity (customers arrive, request service, and leave
or wait until they getit), thesubject is one of depth and
subtlety. We w iillustrate this by briefly visiting some
l
of the most important models, and describing along
the way some of the obvious features and some of the
subtleties.
Queueing Models
The essence of queueing theory is that it takes into
account the randomness of the arrival process and the
randomness of the service process. The most common
assumption about the arrival process is that the
customer arrivals follow a Poisson process. One way
to describe a Poisson arrival process is to imagine that
time is divided into small intervals of length AT.
Assume that in each interval either an arrival occurs
(with probability X . AT, say, where theproportionality
constant X is the arrival rate) or it doesn’t, indepen-
dently of the occurrence or non-occurrence of arrivals
in other intervals. Finally, imagine that AT + 0 (that is,
take limits to pass from discrete time to continuous
time). Then the arrivals are said to follow a Poisson
process; and one of the properties of the Poisson
process is that the times between arrivals (the inter-
arrival time)are exponentially distributed. (A random
variable X is said to be exponentially distributed if its
distribution function F,(t) is given by F,(t) = 1 -
for all t 2 0, where 1/X is the average value of X ) .
One of the most important queueing models is the
Erlang loss model; it assumes that the arrivals follow a
Poisson process, and that the blocked customers (those
who find all servers busy) are cleaved (that is, they are
denied entry into the system, so the blocked customers
are lost) (Fig. 1). The fraction of arriving customers who
find all the servers busy (the probability of blocking, or