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Procedia Computer Science

The age of computation is yet to come

ARTUR K. EKERT

Published Jan 1, 2011• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The theory of classical universal computation was laid down in 1936, was implemented within a decade, became commercial within another decade, and dominated the world's economy half a century later. This success story relied on the progress in technology. As computers become faster they must become smaller. The history of computer technology has involved a sequence of changes from one type of physical realisation to another, with smaller and smaller components. The unavoidable step to the quantum level will be one in this sequence; but it promises something more exciting as well. It can support entirely new modes of computation that do not have classical analogues. There is so much potential in this fundamentally new way of harnessing nature that it appears as though the age of computation has not yet even begun!

DOI
10.1016/j.procs.2011.12.005

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The theory of classical universal computation was laid down in 1936, was implemented within a decade, became commercial within another decade, and dominated the world's economy half a century later. This success story relied on the progress in technology. As computers become faster they must become smaller. The history of computer technology has involved a sequence of changes from one type of physical realisation to another, with smaller and smaller components. The unavoidable step to the quantum level will be one in this sequence; but it promises something more exciting as well. It can support entirely new modes of computation that do not have classical analogues. There is so much potential in this fundamentally new way of harnessing nature that it appears as though the age of computation has not yet even begun!
As computers become faster they must become smaller because of the finiteness of the speed of light. The history of computer technology has involved a sequence of changes from one type of physical realisation to another – from gears to relays to valves to transistors to integrated circuits and so on. The step to the molecular scale – the quantum level – will be next. Quantum theory is already important in the design of microelectronic components. But soon it will be necessary to harness quantum theory, rather than simply take it into account, to give components their functionality.
Quantum theory is vital for the next generation data processing devices. As computers become faster they must become smaller because of the finiteness of the speed of light. The history of computer technology has involved a sequence of changes from one type of physical realisation to another - from gears to relays to valves to transistors to integrated circuits and so on. The step to the molecular scale - the quantum level - will be next. Quantum theory is already important in the design of microelectronic components. Soon it will be necessary to harness quantum theory, rather than simply take it into account, to give data processing devices new functionality.
Computers today become faster by becoming smaller. By reducing the size of transistors, engineers are able to fit more of them on a given size microprocessor, thus increasing the processor's computational power. This process cannot continue forever. It has been estimated that sometime within the next two decades, at the current rate, engineers will be faced with the problem of building something that is smaller than an atom. This is as far as our current "classical" computing paradigm will take us. Quantum computing is a potential solution to this problem. This paradigm of computing seeks to directly exploit quantum mechanical phenomena to perform calculations or in some way boost computational efficiency. Some problems can theoretically be solved on a quantum computer exponentially faster than on a classical computer. An overview of the subject is provided here with emphasis on quantum information processing and physical realizations of a quantum computer. Included is a brief history of the subject, a discussion of quantum computing notions such as parallelism and entanglement and their use in quantum algorithms, and conjecture on the prospects and pitfalls of this theory.