Future of Computing: Quantum Computing

The only constant in the era of technology is change and agility is the ability to adapt to change.
The exponential growth of data has propelled organizations to unlearn and relearn their actions to the new boundaries of information technology towards their vision. Solving a complex problem into hours instead of years by classical systems is the potential significance of Quantum Computing. However, its full potential for business at scale could take decades or more. The embryo of quantum computing is expected to be visible in applications in industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemistry or machine learning within the next five years. The foundation of quantum computing can be clearly defined through the phenomenon known as “entanglement”, which refers to the property of many particles to remain connected such that action on one particle affects all others irrespective of the distance among the particles. Its occurrence opens new avenues for parallel computing which is certainly going to disrupt the way the traditional multi-core systems behave. The computational and storage power propels exponentially in the case of quantum computers due to quantum bits as compared to the bits used in traditional mechanisms.
Enzymes are the epicenter of learning in the pharmaceutical industry as it ferments various types of biochemical interactions accurately. The underlining power of enzymes can mystify different types of diseases in the domain of healthcare. The molecular structure of enzymes is the major edge to resolve the integral puzzle where traditional computers fail to detect the optimal solution. However, with the enormous power of quantum computing, it can predict accurately and precisely in hours and disrupt drug development in the healthcare domain. Quantum computing opens new horizons to unfold various unparalleled capabilities for applications of all kinds including finance, transportation, chemicals, cyber security, and machine learning.

Models of machine learning in the classical systems have shown favorable results in scientific issues such as cancer detection, weather and climate prediction, and detecting new exoplanets. With the additional power of quantum computing, new quantum machine learning models could break the ceiling in the applications of medicine, traffic optimization, and financial modeling to name a few. It will enhance the modeling effectiveness and prediction accuracy by providing support to complex datasets that work in high-dimensional space.

The ongoing era is a process of making history to devise new algorithms for intractable complex problems via the power of quantum bits. Moreover, fault-tolerance dream of quantum computing will take decades or more to decode. Making a note further, this is the right time to explore the potential of quantum computers across various areas in machine learning, cyber security, climate change, sensing and simulation. Those who wish to wait might land onto the “quantum advantage” phase directly and miss nearer-term opportunities.

Written By :- Dr. Charu Virmani, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, MRIIRS