Do you know what 100 microseconds is?
They are the fraction of the fraction of the time that a blink lasts. They are almost nothing, and yet in quantum computing they are almost everything. It is the time that the magic of qubits lasts today, the quantum version of bits that sustains the promise of this new breed of computers. A few microseconds of this magic were enough for Google to demonstrate the so-called supremacy of quantum computers with its Sycamore prototype: making a calculation in just over three minutes that would have taken a conventional computer 10,000 years.
This ephemeral magic is the seed of the revolution that will come from the hand of this new technology, according to experts: it will allow banks to better calculate the risks of certain operations and reduce interest rates; it will give rise to hitherto unimaginable drugs to cure serious illnesses in a simple way; It will make possible lighter batteries with greater autonomy, as well as new biodegradable plastics...
HOW QUANTUM COMPUTERS WORK
But what exactly is the quantum miracle of qubits that is getting closer to changing our world? "The qubit is the excited state that occurs in a superconducting material when its temperature drops a lot", explains Manuel Pino, ComFuturo researcher at the CSIC 's Institute of Fundamental Physics. He explains it by measuring each word to avoid terminological mines that would make the definition more precise, but also more incomprehensible. And when he finishes, he makes a second attempt: «It is a superconducting loop in which the current can go to the right or to the left and the quantum state is produced when it goes in both directions at the same time».
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And in this possibility of the coin falling heads and tails simultaneously is where the powerful calculation capacity of quantum computers lies: the information encoded in a qubit allows the superposition of zeros and ones where in the classical bits there is only room for one of them. the two options.
However, this state of grace of the qubit can only be maintained for a few microseconds today, which greatly limits the development and commercialization of these computers. "It is very difficult to make a quantum computer, because the qubits are physical objects and any interaction with the environment makes them stop behaving as such," argues Sergio Boixo, the Spaniard who works as Google's chief scientist for Quantum Computing Theory and who led the creation of Sycamore.
"What can I do so that the quantum state doesn't disappear so quickly?" Manuel Pino wonders. "If you isolate the qubit, it lasts a long time, but then it's not going to talk to the qubit next to it," he replies. And of course, these computers will not reach their true dimension until thousands and thousands of qubits can be connected to them. These are the great pending challenges for a science that is going to profoundly transform our world, although we can still only glimpse in what direction. "We don't know if in 10 years or 30, but it's going to be a new industrial revolution and I think it's important to be there," says Boixo.
HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS
According to a report by the consulting firm Mckinsey, the economic impact of quantum computing will be between 300,000 and 700,000 million dollars per year (between 272,000 and 636,000 million euros), adding the four industries that benefit the most: pharmaceuticals (between 13 and 68 billion euros), chemistry (between 18,000 and 36,000), automotive (9,000-23,000) and finance. The latter is the field where the impact would have the greatest volume (it is an industry of 6.9 million), but it is still early to estimate it, since it is further from a real application of quantum computing.
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"By concentrating on problems of chemistry, finance, logistics... you can already solve problems that are too complex for a conventional supercomputer," says Enrique Solano, CEO of the Qipu Quantum company and honorary professor at Ikerbasque. “If you change the paradigm and accept that it is not a universal quantum computer, but rather that it attacks a specific problem , a few hundred or a few thousand qubits would suffice”, argues this expert. "These computers are not yet to come, but are being manufactured now," he adds.
TECHNOLOGICAL SOVEREIGNTY
Precisely, thinking about what place each country is going to occupy in the quantum technology industry and what implications the resulting map is going to have in world geopolitics is one of the crucial factors in the face of this revolution.
“It will be a proprietary technology. When there are universal computers, there will be countries that have them and countries that don't, like the atomic bomb," warns Pol Forn-DÃaz, a researcher at the High Energy Physics Institute and co-founder of Qilimanjaro, the first Spanish company that has set out to develop and commercialize quantum computers.
"If a country like the US develops it, forget about it selling it to you," he adds. Enrique Solano is especially concerned about the consequences of giving up technological sovereignty in this field : «As close as it is, the US could turn its back on us and spy on us without problems. It would not even be advisable to depend on France and Germany», he warns.
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Because another of the key consequences of quantum progress will be the obsolescence of all cryptography as we know it, since it will allow any encryption to be unraveled with the astonishing ease with which Neo stopped bullets in the Matrix.
The optimization of logistics decisions, the training of the AI of the autonomous car via machine learning and the micro-level simulation of substances that exist in nature for the creation of new drugs are the other territories in which these computers easily beat the classics.
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