When the Super Small Transforms the Super Big

The benefits that we can anticipate from quantum computing in the business world are expected to be dramatic. Having orders of magnitude of incremental computing power will allow companies — and governments — to tackle very complex challenges across areas that include cybersecurity, healthcare, logistics, financial markets and everything around taking artificial intelligence (AI) to the next level.

These are definitively exciting times for a new era of digital transformation. Just think about these three technology breakthroughs coming together: 5G providing dramatic increases in terms of speed and bandwidth of cellular networks (accelerating the whole internet), the “trivergence” (the combination of Internet-of-Things, AI and blockchain) enabling a myriad of intelligent devices  — and people — to execute trusted transactions without centralized entities, and then quantum computing, with the promise of providing incremental computing power to the next level. While 5G and the trivergence are present today, with expected huge adoption expansion in the short term, quantum computing is in its early stages and not ready for the masses yet. But it is coming, one way or another.

Let’s now understand the fundamentals of quantum computing. Quantum mechanics (a branch of physics) is a complicated, nonintuitive and fascinating area of knowledge, so I will focus only on the aspects of quantum computing that will potentially have transformational impact for businesses. I admit that I have always been passionate about quantum mechanics since my college days studying engineering physics.

Quantum computing is about storing and processing information using individual subatomic (quantum) particles, instead of the traditional transistors. One of the fundamental and most unexpected aspects of these quantum particles, is that they actually have properties that are present in both “particles” (like the traditional matter we know) and “waves” (like electromagnetic waves, such as light); therefore, sometimes we can measure their position and speed only as a probability and not as a 100 percent accurate amount. For simplicity, I will refer to these dual particle-wave entities as “particles.”

There are two main reasons why building computers using quantum particles is so appealing:

• Superposition: In traditional computing, the basic unit is binary (either 1 or 0) and we call it a “bit” – the basic concept of a switch being on/off. In quantum computing, the basic unit is a “qubit” (quantum bit), which can represent 1, 0, and both 1 and 0 simultaneously, due to a property called “superposition” (closely related to its dual nature of being a particle and a wave). A qubit is a quantum particle, which has more possible states than a binary switch, although its outcome — when measured — will be either 1 or 0.
• Entanglement: When two particles interact in specific ways, they get “entangled,” which basically means that their outcomes (measurements) will be correlated. So entangled qubits will produce opposed measurements, even if they are thousands of miles apart. A measurement of 1 or 0 for one qubit, will determine the measurement of the other qubit. Sounds strange but it is real — it is just another example of how far from our own intuition the quantum world is.

In summary, superposition opens the opportunity to manage multiple states (versus the limitation of a binary system) and to analyze the multiple related outcomes (states) in parallel, while entanglement allows knowledge of the outcome of two particles by measuring just one – which is the basis of teleportation. These three benefits combined are expected to translate into more computing capability than we have ever imagined before.

One of the most important American physicists of all time, Richard Feynman, formulated a question that triggered the initial notion of a quantum computer. A few years after he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, while lecturing at MIT in the early ‘80s, Feynman stated: “If we cannot simulate quantum physics on a computer, maybe we can build a quantum mechanical computer, which would be better than ordinary computers” Basically, using the “super small” (subatomic particles) to tackle the “super big” challenges in science.

Forty years after Feynman’s vision of a computer with the capability of controlling properties of subatomic particles, we are now in the first phase of development of quantum computers. Many well-established technology companies, as well as new players, are getting into this market. It certainly is not mainstream yet, but it seems that there is full certainty that quantum computing is a real trend and progress is now consistent.

On a separate and more personal note, during a recent visit to Los Alamos in New Mexico, I learned that Feynman spent some time there as part of the Manhattan Project –helping to design and build the first atomic bomb. As of today, Los Alamos has one of the greatest science museums I’ve ever visited, the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s The Bradbury Science Museum. And it is not just for nuclear physics but for all fields in science.

Going back to digital transformation, many companies have embarked on multiyear transformational journeys, starting with digitizing their data, introducing automation, then implementing enterprise applications, such as ERP, HCM and CRM, connecting those applications to customers and suppliers, enhancing their applications with, for example, mobility, analytics, security, application integration and augmented reality, and then moving their applications and infrastructure to the cloud to have “everything-as-a-service.” Now, adding 5G and the Trivergence gets even more exciting.

Despite all the current technologies available today — and mentioned above — there are certain challenges that will require quantum computing to be tackled. Some examples include building unbreakable encryption for cybersecurity, designing molecules for drug discovery, teleportation of information for future quantum networks, hyper-optimization of complex logistics and financial markets modeling. These types of applications will require us to learn how to manage subatomic particles at the lowest level to exploit their full potential in the computing arena. The “super small” transforming the “super big.”