KATHMANDU ENGINEERING COLLEGE

Kalimati, Kathmandu
(Affiliated to Tribhuvan University)

HOME ASSIGNMENT
OF
ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT

SUBMITTED BY: SUBMITTED TO:

NAME: SUBASH SHRESTHA DEPARTMENT OF
ROLL NO.: 74074 COMPUTER ENGINEERING
SECTION: B
YEAR: 4th year
Difference between Classical computers and Quantum computers:
The computers have completely invaded our lives in the form of cell phones, tabs, desktops,
laptops and a lot more. However, all these gadgets come under the category of Classical
computers. As we know, these are pretty good and efficient to perform all the major
operations that we come across in our day to day life. Then, why is there a need to have
something called Quantum computers, and how are they different from the Classical
computers that we use.

Let’s have a look at working of Quantum computers versus Classical computers:

Quantum computers have now become a talk of the town. All the computing devices in this
universe rely on a very basic ability to store and manipulate information. The classical
computers manipulate individual bits and store information as binary 0 and 1 states.
However, the Quantum computers on the other hand employ quantum mechanical
phenomenons to process the information. So, where classical computers use classical logic
gates to do the computation, the quantum computers engage quantum logic gates to achieve
this. And, in order to do this, they rely on quantum bits or qubits.

Figure: Qubit versus Classical bit

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The Qubits represent the undefined properties of an object before they’ve been actually
measured, such as the spin of an electron which is uncertain before any measurement takes
place on it. In other words, these quantum bits represent a state of superposition. So, for a
single bit system, where classical computers can store information in either binary 1 or 0, the
quantum computers can also utilize the superposition of 0 and 1 to achieve the same more
efficiently. But there is more to information processing in the quantum computers than just
superposition. If we look at a system of more than one qubit, then the individual components
aren’t generally independent of each other. Before we read their value they are in an
indeterminate state called superposition and can be influenced by other qubits (this is called
entanglement).

Since Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object’s state
before it is measured instead of just 0’s or 1’s, they have the potential to process
exponentially more data compared to classical computers. An n-bit classical computer can
store only n amplitudes of information. Whereas, a n-qubit quantum computer can store 2^n
amplitudes of information.

Findings:
Some of the findings on difference between Quantum computers and Classical computers are
listed in points below:
 The essence of the difference between classical computers and quantum computers is
in the way information is stored and processed.
 Classical computers are large scale integrated multipurpose computer whereas
Quantum computers are high speed parallel computer based on quantum mechanics.
 In Classical computers information is represented on macroscopic level by bits i.e. 0
or 1 and in Quantum computers information is represented on microscopic level using
qubits (quantum bits).
 In Classical computers information processing is carried out by logic gates such as
NOT, AND, OR etc. in sequential basis. On the other hand in Quantum computers
information processing is carried out by quantum logic gates in parallel basis.
 Classical computers answers only specifically defined results inherently limited by
algorithm’s design but Quantum answers are probabilistic meaning that because of
superposition and entanglement multiple possible answers are considered in a given
computation.

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Conclusion:
According to the technology development, Quantum computers can spur the development of
new breakthroughs in various fields, be it security systems, finance management, research,
medications and a lot more. But these are not very useful as far as our daily tasks of watching
Netflix, writing an email etc. are concerned. These are not the places where quantum
computers will really help us. But, even when the first classical computers were built, people
had the same impression about them being useful only to scientists, and the rest is history. So,
only the time will tell what the Quantum computers have in store for us.