The Evolution and Applications of Quantum Computers

Sophistication has advanced as people learnt new ways of developing various physical resources such as materials, forces and energies. The history of computer technology has involved an order of changes of physical understanding, from gears and relays to valves to transistors and integrated circuits and so on. Today's advanced lithographic methods can squeeze portion of micron wide logic gates and buses onto the surface of silicon chips. Soon they will carry even smaller parts and eventually get to a point where logic gates are so minute that they are built out of a handful of atoms.

On the atomic level matter adheres to the rules of quantum mechanics, which are different from the conventional rules that govern the properties of orthodox logic gates. So if computers are built smaller in the future, quantum technology must act as a substitute for or enhance what we have now. Quantum technology can offer much more than shoving more bits to silicon and increasing the clock-speed of microprocessors. It can sustain an entirely new kind of computation with advanced algorithms based on quantum principles.

Quantum computing is a significant section of the new and quickly evolving field of quantum information processing and communication. This field deals with representations and approaches of computing, algorithms, communication procedures, innate complexity considerations, cryptography protocols, and so on, for situations where by quantum objects, and not the traditional ones, are the bearers of information.

Research in quantum information processing has already been conveyed, compared with the traditional case, quicker algorithms for some important algorithmic problems, but not for all such problems; fundamentally new cryptographic ...

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...extremely time-consuming on conventional computers.

There are many difficulties, which has to be overcome before we can begin to appreciate the benefits they may provide. Researchers worldwide are competing to be the first to build a applied system, a feat, which some scientists think, is in vain. David Deutsch, one of the scientists in quantum computing said himself, "Perhaps, their most profound effect may prove to be theoretical".

Can we really build a useful quantum computer? Who knows; in a quantum world, anything is possible!

Works Cited

“Quantum Computers.” ewh.ieee.org. ieee, n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2011.

< http://ewh.ieee.org/r10/bombay/news4/Quantum_Computers.htm>

Gruska, Jozef. “Quantum Computing.” Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering (2009): 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 12 Nov. 2011.

Smite-Meister. “Bloch_Sphere.” 30 Jan. 2009.