A major turning point in the computing industry

Creating breakthrough pharmaceutical drugs, testing new materials for cars, and simulating market scenarios that could impact banks— these are some of the tasks that can take months or years to develop, even with the most advanced computers.

But what if that time period could be shortened to minutes or hours?

That’s the promise of quantum computing, a field that has been studied for decades and is attracting increasing interest and investment from tech giants and startups alike.

On November 12, the American multinational computer technology corporation (IBM) announced a new experimental Loon processor and Nighthawk quantum computing chip, which can perform more complex calculations than the previous generation.

The past two years have seen quantum-related announcements from Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies.

According to McKinsey & Company, quantum computing could generate $1.3 trillion in value growth across a number of industries by 2035, and with good reason.

Experts believe quantum computing could also lead to breakthroughs in areas such as cryptography, finance, science and transportation.

IBM says the technology can solve some problems in minutes or hours that would normally take non-quantum computers thousands of years.

But there is still a long way to go. Solving quantum computing is not just an upgrade of existing computers, but a completely separate approach based on the principles of quantum physics.

Making the difference of quantum computers

Computers store and process information using a language made up of numbers 0 and 1, also known as "bits".

But quantum computing uses “quantum bits,” also known as “qubits.” Instead of being just a 0 or a 1, qubits can act as either a 0 or a 1 at the same time, and exist in states between 0 and 1, processing information much faster.

BMW Group and Airbus are now partnering with quantum computing startup Quantinuum to research how the technology can be used in fuel cell development.

Meanwhile, Accenture Labs, biotech company Biogen and quantum computing company 1QBit are collaborating on pharmaceutical-related research.

“Quantum computers can compare molecules much larger than those that classical computers can compute,” Accenture said on its website.

Anand Natarajan, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, shares the biggest hope that quantum computers can simulate any kind of chemical or biological experiment done in the lab.

Quantum computers could have a huge impact on cryptography and cybersecurity because they could be used to break data protection codes, according to Mr. Natarajan.

The race to break through quantum computing

In that context, quantum computing could solve problems that are currently intractable. For example, qubits are extremely fragile, making them highly susceptible to external factors such as changes in temperature or light.

IBM is just one contender in the quantum computing race. In February, Microsoft introduced the Majorana 1 quantum computing chip.

The chip contains a special material that the company says can create a new state of matter, capable of creating more stable qubits.

In December, Google announced its Willow quantum computing chip, which it says reduces errors by using more qubits and can do in five minutes what would take a conventional computer 10 trillion years.

There is no definitive conclusion about when quantum computing will reach its full potential.

However, Associate Professor Natarajan believes we may have to wait another decade or two.

McKinsey said 72% of the tech executives, investors, and academics it spoke to believe that fully fault-tolerant quantum computers could be available by 2035. IBM expects to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computing by the end of the decade.

And when that happens, the benefits could be huge. And that's one of the promises that quantum computers offer.

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