QUANTUM COMPUTING
1. Context
India decided to join in this global effort in a big way, by setting up a Rs 6,000 crore National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications.
The development of homegrown quantum computers is one of the major objectives of the mission.
2. About quantum computing
- Quantum computing is a rapidly-emerging technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical computers.
- IBM Quantum makes real quantum hardware a tool scientists only began to imagine three decades ago available to hundreds of thousands of developers.
- Engineers deliver ever-more-powerful superconducting quantum processors at regular intervals, alongside crucial advances in software and quantum-classical orchestration.
- This work drives toward the quantum computing speed and capacity necessary to change the world.
- These machines are very different from the classical computers that have been around for more than half a century.
Image Source: IBM
3. Need for quantum computers
- For some problems, supercomputers aren’t that super. When scientists and engineers encounter difficult problems, they turn to supercomputers.
- These are very large classical computers, often with thousands of classical CPU and GPU cores. However, even supercomputers struggle to solve certain kinds of problems.
- If a supercomputer gets stumped, that's probably because the big classical machine was asked to solve a problem with a high degree of complexity. When classical computers fail, it's often due to complexity
- Complex problems are problems with lots of variables interacting in complicated ways.
- Modelling the behaviour of individual atoms in a molecule is a complex problem, because of all the different electrons interacting with one another.
- Sorting out the ideal routes for a few hundred tankers in a global shipping network is complex too.
4. Quantum computers work
- Quantum computers are elegant machines, smaller and requiring less energy than supercomputers.
- An IBM Quantum processor is a wafer not much bigger than the one found in a laptop.
- And a quantum hardware system is about the size of a car, made up mostly of cooling systems to keep the superconducting processor at its ultra-cold operational temperature.
- A classical processor uses bits to perform its operations. A quantum computer uses qubits (CUE-bits) to run multidimensional quantum algorithms.
4.1. Superfluids
- A desktop computer likely uses a fan to get cold enough to work.
- Quantum processors need to be very cold about a hundredth of a degree above absolute zero.
- To achieve this, we use super-cooled superfluids to create superconductors.
4.2. Superconductors
- At those ultra-low temperatures, certain materials in our processors exhibit another important quantum mechanical effect: electrons move through them without resistance. This makes them "superconductors."
- When electrons pass through superconductors they match up, forming "Cooper pairs."
- These pairs can carry a charge across barriers, or insulators, through a process known as quantum tunnelling.
- Two superconductors placed on either side of an insulator form a Josephson junction.
4.3. Control
- Our quantum computers use Josephson junctions as superconducting qubits.
- By firing microwave photons at these qubits, we can control their behaviour and get them to hold, change, and read out individual units of quantum information.
4.4. Superposition
- A qubit itself isn't very useful. But it can perform an important trick: placing the quantum information it holds into a state of superposition, which represents a combination of all possible configurations of the qubit.
- Groups of qubits in superposition can create complex, multidimensional computational spaces. Complex problems can be represented in new ways in these spaces.
4.5. Entanglement
- Entanglement is a quantum mechanical effect that correlates the behaviour of two separate things.
- When two qubits are entangled, changes to one qubit directly impact the other.
- Quantum algorithms leverage those relationships to find solutions to complex problems.
5. Making quantum computers useful
- Right now, IBM Quantum leads the world in quantum computing hardware and software. It is a clear and detailed plan to scale quantum processors, overcomes the scaling problem, and build the hardware necessary for quantum advantage.
- Quantum advantage will not be achieved with hardware alone.
- IBM has also spent years advancing the software that will be necessary to do useful work using quantum computers.
- They developed the Qiskit quantum SDK. It is open-source, python-based, and by far the most widely-used quantum SDK in the world.
- The Qiskit Runtime is the most powerful quantum programming model in the world.
- Achieving quantum advantage will require new methods of suppressing errors, increasing speed, and orchestrating quantum and classical resources.
|
For Prelims: Quantum computing, supercomputers, Qiskit Runtime, IBM, National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications, superconductors,
For Mains:
1. What is Quantum computing? Discuss the need for Quantum Computers in emerging countries like India. (250 Words)
2. What are quantum computers and how are they different from conventional computers? Where does India stand in the race to build quantum computers that can realise their full potential? (250 Words)
|
|
Previous Year Questions
1. India's first Supercomputer is (TSPSC AEE 2015)
A. Aditya
B. Param Yuva
C. Param
D. Vikram-100
Answer: C
2. What is the full form of IBM? (SSC Steno 2017)
A. International Business Machine
B. Indian Beta Machine
C. Integral Business Machine
D. Internal Beta Machine
Answer: A
3. Which one of the following is the context in which the term "qubit" is mentioned? (UPSC 2022)
A. Cloud Services
B. Quantum Computing
C. Visible Light Communication Technologies
D. Wireless Communication Technologies
Answer: B
4. Quantum computing uses (ACC 124 CGAT 2021)
A. Qubit
B. Bits
C. Bytes
D. Qubytes
Answer: A
|
Source: IBM
