Quantum Computers

Computer Scientists and Physicist have long sought to develop computers more powerful,
moreover the results of a recent piece of research have provided a compelling evidence for
their major breakthrough in the computer science world.

Yes! That’s Quantum computers for you.

The study area that concentrates on the implementation of quantum theory principles for
developing the computer technology is called Quantum computing. The main focus here is
given to clarify the nature and character of energy and matter on the level of quantum. There
are wide range of research university who are working on this Project. Unlike classical
computers when dealing with Quantum Computers you have to manipulate individual atoms
which make it exceedingly hard for engineers, and moreover it is the job for a Physicists rather
than an engineer.

How Close Are We—Really—to Building a Quantum Computer?

Google just took a quantum leap in computer science. Using the company's state-of-the-art
quantum computer, called Sycamore, Google has claimed quantum supremacy over the most
powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible
for normal machines.
The quantum computer completed the complex computation in 200 seconds. That same
calculation would take even the most powerful supercomputers approximately 10,000 years to
finish, the team of researchers, led by John Martinis, an experimental physicist at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. The calculation that Google chose to conquer is the quantum
equivalent of generating a very long list of random numbers and checking their values a million
times over. The result is a solution not particularly useful outside of the world of quantum
mechanics, but it has big implications for the processing power of a device. On paper, it's easy
to show why a quantum computer could outperform traditional computers. Demonstrating the
task in the real world is another story. Whereas classical computers can stack millions of
operating bits in their processors, quantum computers struggle to scale the number of qubits
they can operate with. Entangled qubits become untangled after short periods and are
susceptible to noise and errors.
Although this Google achievement is certainly a feat in the world of quantum computing, the
field is still in its infancy and practical quantum computers remain far on the horizon, the
researchers said.

What does it mean to the current market?

With Quantum computer coming on board, there are several issues which accompanies it.
When information is money, data security, transparency and accountability are crucial. A
blockchain is a secure digital record, or ledger. It is maintained collectively by users around
the globe, rather than by one central administration. Any party inside or outside the network
can check the integrity of the ledger by making a simple calculation. But within a decade,
quantum computers will be able to break a blockchain’s cryptographic codes.
Blockchain security relies on ‘one-way’ mathematical functions. These are straightforward to
run on a conventional computer and difficult to calculate in reverse. For example, multiplying
two large prime numbers is easy, but finding the prime factors of a given product is hard ,it can
take a conventional computer many years to solve. Such functions are used to generate digital
signatures that blockchain users cite to authenticate themselves to others. These are easy to
check and extremely difficult to forge. One-way functions are also used to validate the history
of transactions in the blockchain ledger. The hash, a short sequence of bits, is derived from a
combination of the existing ledger and the block that is to be added; this alters whenever the
contents of the entry are changed. Again, it is relatively easy to find the hash of a block (to
process information to add a record) but difficult to pick a block that would yield a specific
hash value. That would require reversing the process to derive the information that generated
the hash.
Yet, within ten years, quantum computers will be able to calculate the one-way functions, that
are used to secure the Internet and financial transactions. Widely deployed one-way encryption
will instantly become obsolete.
The blockchain business needs to update its existing software to use one-way cryptographic
functions that are equally hard to reverse using conventional or quantum computers.. Until
these post-quantum solutions are established or standardized, platforms must be flexible and
capable of changing cryptographic algorithms on the fly.