The Present and Possible Future of Quantum Computing

What is quantum computing and how does it work? Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object's state before it is measured - instead of just 1s or 0s - which means they have the potential to process exponentially more data compared to classical computers. ... A single state - such as on or off, up or down, 1 or 0 - is called a bit.What would a quantum computer do? A quantum computer encodes information into quantum states and computes by performing quantum operations on it. There are several tasks for which a quantum computer will be useful. ... Or we could model chemical reactions—because interactions among atoms in a chemical reaction is a quantum process.Is Quantum Computing real? It Will Simulate the Subatomic World. Inside IBM's commercial “IBM Q” quantum system.Is quantum computing difficult? Quantum computers are exceedingly difficult to engineer, build and program. As a result, they are crippled by errors in the form of noise, faults and loss of quantum coherence, which is crucial to their operation and yet falls apart before any nontrivial program has a chance to run to completion.Does Microsoft have a quantum computer? Microsoft hoped to harness Majorana particles to build a quantum computer, which promises unprecedented power by tapping quirky physics. ... Three years later, Microsoft's 2018 physics fillip has fizzled. Late last month, Kouwenhoven and his 21 coauthors released a new paper including more data from their experiments.