Quantum computing is interesting. This is indeed a good area for research, but my feeling is that we still have a long way to go. Today, we have examples of quantum computers (always arrive before the software), but these examples are very primitive. Using a digital computer, we consider doing the calculations and obtaining answers. Instead, a quantum computer will provide a probability distribution for where our answers are, and you will have a lot of things that we call running on a quantum computer, and it will give you many potential solutions, but it won’t give you the answer. So it will be different.
Using quantum computing, are we stuck in a hype moment?
I think unfortunately it’s already oversold – there’s too much quantum-related hype. Often people get excited about it, and then it doesn’t fit any promises made, and then the excitement will collapse.
We’ve seen this before: AI has gone through that cycle and recovered. And now, AI is real. People use it, productive, and it will serve us all in a very substantial way. I think Quantum has to go through that winter experience, people will ignore it, they will ignore it, and then there will be some smart people figuring out how to use it and how to make it more competitive with traditional things.
Many problems must be solved. Quantum computers are very easy to interfere. They will have a lot of “breaks” – they will crash due to the fragile nature of computing. Unless we can make things more resistant to these failures, it won’t do the work we wish we could do. I don’t think we’ll ever have a laptop with a quantum laptop. I might be wrong, but of course, I don’t think this will happen in my life.
Quantum computers also require quantum algorithms, and today, there are few algorithms that can be effectively run on quantum computers. Therefore, quantum computing is still in its infancy and will use the infrastructure of quantum computers. So quantum algorithms, quantum software, the technology we have, all of which are very primitive.
When can we expect (if ever) the transition from traditional systems to quantum systems?
So today we have many supercomputing centers all over the world and they have very powerful computers. These are digital computers. Sometimes, digital computers add something to improve performance – accelerators. These accelerators are GPUs, graphics processing units today. The GPU is doing well, and it is doing well, it is already architecture. In the past, this was important for graphics. Today, we are refactoring so that we can use the GPU to meet some of the computing needs we have.
