What are scientists inputting into a quantum computer and what are they getting out of it? I don’t understand what it’s ‘calculating’?
In: Mathematics
A way to think about quantum computers is that they can consider an entire puzzle at once.
As long as they have enough memory to fit the entire puzzle in one go.
If you can define your puzzle well, the quantum computer will consider all at once and then spit out all the solutions. Meanwhile binary computers have to do it step by step.
An often used example is postman problems, which ask ‘what is the shortest route to visit a lot of locations.’ On a binary computer these tend to be polynomial. Every extra location adds a ton of extra options to consider. But if you have enough qubits to fit the entire question into a quantum computer, then it solves it all in one go.
The difference in results can be dramatic. With current computing power, multiplied primes used for passwords take billions of years to solve. If someone builds a QC that can fit the primes puzzle in its memory, it solves it in a few minutes.
There are quite a few problems in the world that could be solved in this regard. For instance, around protein folding, which comes in to play in a lot of medicine.
But these machines are not ‘fast’ in the general sense as people think about normal computers. Single calculations are many orders of magnitudes slower. They won’t make for a magic computer future.
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