From Classical to Quantum Computing

With the invention of the computers, it was possible to do information processing outside the brains of the humans. The architecture of computers has seen a major face-lift by undergoing a transition from vacuum tubes, transistors to today’s ultra-fast supercomputers. This has resulted in smaller faster and cost-effective computing machines. Thousands of logic gates and other digital circuits are squeezed onto the surface of a small silicon chip.

The size of microchip components will be on the scale of molecules and atoms such that quantum physical effects will dominate, hence irrevocably require effective means of quantum computation. It is known that quantum computing based on quantum physics can simulate classical computing.

The advancement in technology has now led to the design of a radically new computer architecture based on the quantum properties of an atom. This has led to the consideration of a non-Boolean approach toward computing based on the complex states of quantum matter. The advantages obtained by considering the computations at the atom level are much more than the contemporaries.

Quantum computing is a potential solution to this problem. This paradigm of computing seeks to directly exploit quantum mechanical phenomena to perform calculations or in some way boost computational efficiency. Some problems can theoretically be solved on a quantum computer exponentially faster than on a classical computer because it supports parallelism unlike classical computer. The concept of parallelism is the key major difference between Quantum computing and classical computing.

There is a quantum analogue to the bit, the qubit. The qubit is represented mathematically as a two-dimensional vector. Unlike its classical counterpart, the qubit is not limited to only two values. In fact, it can occupy an infinity of states between “0” and “1”. The quantum “0” and “1” states are represented as vector and the state of any qubit will be some superposition of these two basis vectors. State after superposition will be between 0 and 1.
The new architecture based on the quantum properties of atom will be smaller in size and much faster in speed.