Until the 1970s, Computers were considered a high-end technology that could only be accessible to scientists and highly trained professionals. With the sudden change in the history of computation, the machines became much smaller and more powerful. It was the shift in which people started using computers in their routine life for daily calculations. They became accessible to everyone to use in their own homes.
But now, in the 21st century, Computing power is reaching a crisis point. As the problems become more substantial in terms of scope and complexity, and a requirement for robust processors continues to increase, we need more complex computational systems. If we observe a trend since computers were introduced, we will not have the capability to power all the machines in the world by 2040. To solve complex problems, we need much more powerful, high-speed processors.
There has been a buzz of computer computers in science and technology for years, but the devices are not yet used in our daily lives. Today, quantum computing is at its origin. Quantum computation combines concepts from the physics of the 20th-century. Many countries started experimentation and building the first quantum computers. Today, many companies, intelligence agencies, and governments began investing in the development of quantum technology.
Till now, we are using classical computers that work based on the way how human computes. It breaks down all computations into two parts, i.e., the binary digits 0 and 1, represented as bits. But the future is Quantum computation that works on how the universe computes. Quantum computers comprise all the features of standard computing or say classical computing along with the incorporation of new concepts from quantum physics. The idea of quantum computers is basically to make use of the rules of quantum mechanics to process information.
In quantum computing, qubits have been used instead of the bits of classical computation. However, the results generated from a quantum computation is almost the same as that from a conventional calculation. The main difference is that, during the quantum computation, the computer can manage qubits in several different ways than it can with bits. It can put qubits in a superposition (a mixture of both 0 and 1) of states and entangled (correlation between qubits). When one pair of correlated qubits are measured, it immediately shows the value of other correlated qubits. This means that by considering the superposition state and by processing it using the laws of quantum mechanics, many inputs can be treated at a time. It could be potentially an exponential speedup, compared to the classical programs. The quantum computer has the potential to store more information than conventional machines.
Some of the leading companies that work in this field say, quantum machines harness the essential properties of quantum mechanics to speed up computation. They also claim that within the next five years, its an excellent opportunity to solve a set of problems that were never solved before.