Quantified

If you’ve been following the next big event in computing technology, you’ve probably heard of quantum computing. You may even have the technical understanding that it’s an evolution that would allow computers to “think” in more than zero’s and one’s. Quantum systems are able to represent more than one state, which opens up vast new possibilities. But how? What are they?

The fundamental principle is that quantum computing will raise our humdrum computers to a whole new level. Once quantum processors become generally available, probably sometime in the next decade, the computers we know and use today will seem like old LCD-based calculators in comparison. Some of this potential was unveiled in Feburary by D-Wave Systems.

So let’s make some of the lofty statements a bit more pragmatic. Today, when you want to find something on Google, you have to provide a set of words that hopefully narrow down a huge potential result set. Let’s say you’re trying to find another one of those antique chairs you’re sitting in. Perhaps a Google search for “antique wooden chair with leather and diamond patterns” will get you started; in my case, it points me at 74,600 possible matches. Most of them have something to do with chairs, or at least furniture, but nothing on the first few pages gets close to what I want.

The promise of quantum computing is that computers will, among other things, be capable of pattern recognition similar to human abilities. When we see a face, we know who it is. Today, that’s exceedingly difficult for a computer. A quantum powered Google search, however, would do away with the clunky word-based search. Instead, I could snap a photograph of my chair and feed that to Google, asking it to find “something that looks like this picture.” With the computer’s inherent ability to do repetitive tasks quickly, and the new quantum pattern matching capabilities, Google would presumably find exactly what I want in moments.

Of course, there are thousands of applications ranging from bioinformatics to simulation. But the antique chair example remains the most concrete and most consumer-oriented one I’ve heard of yet.