Faster is Disruptive - Quantum Computing

The last decade has seen some of the most disrupting tech-marvels that have changed the way businesses operate. Customers are now used to AI/robots dealing with their investments (Rob advisors), making payments through Siri, connected homes etc. A robot just got a citizenship in Saudi Arabia. So much for tech ruling the way we live our lives but what will happen when the computing power increases drastically. The answer may lie in the topic I am going to write about in this article – Quantum computing.

Our traditional computers can store the data in either ‘1’ of ‘0’ at a given time. Quantum computing is using the ability of subatomic particles to exist in one or more state and store the data in either ‘1’, ‘0’ or both (0 and 1) at the same time. Quantum computer can do 2^n calculations together, a 2qubit computer can do 4 calculation together, 3 qubit computers would be able to do 8 calculations together. To put things into perspective, the fastest quantum computer today has the processing power of 50 qubits (held by IBM) which is equal to computation power of approx. 16-PB of RAM.

David Deutsche, father of Quantum computing introduced the world to the idea and then commercialised by companies such IBM and D-Wave, who plan to make this technology accessible to everyone. Quantum computing would not only provide solutions to complex problems that were not possible to solve on regular computers but will also have the potential to disrupt industry sectors such as Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals and Aerospace. Recently, Microsoft took the initiative of attracting developers to the quantum world by releasing the first version of its Quantum Developer Kit which includes new programming language Q# and followed by Google which introduced the first public alpha of Cirq, an open source framework that allows developers to create algorithms without needing background on quantum physics. With the quantum computer coming into the ecosystem, few of the new-age technology that would be impacted are:

Blockchain

Quantum Computing will have a great impact on blockchain as it would have the computing power to break the cryptographic functions that provides security to the current prominent blockchain. To successfully hack a blockchain, a targeted block and all the connected nodes needs to be altered, quantum computers would be able to alter 51% of the nodes easily together hence hacking the blockchain. There are few projects that have already started working towards the threat that quantum computing possesses towards blockchain. Few examples are:

Quantum Resistance Ledger: This blockchain is using the Extended Merkle signature scheme (XMSS) which is more resistant to an attack by quantum computers than the ECDSA cryptography standard which is being used by most of the blockchain today

BlockDag: This blockchain protocol has claimed that its solution is free from the threat of quantum computers by using tangle protocol, also known as BlockDAG protocol. The tangle protocol provides faster transaction rates by removing Proof of Stake and using Proof of movement

TIM: TIM is using consensus mechanism through geo-mining (GPS combined with blockchain), where the Dapps will become hyperlocal and geo-location aware. The project will also use vertical sharding to increase the transaction speed of the blockchain, where the first layer will store the Merkle hash of the second layer, where the transaction data is stored in the blocks.

IoT

IoT is catching up speed in being adopted by large enterprises and it would eventually evolve to Quantum IoT. These devices would have higher capacity of capturing data which would eventually lead us in living fully -smart lives. Some of the parameters which would be solved by Quantum IoT are

Security: The present IoT devices gather data and send the acquired data to the cloud infrastructure for analysis, these devices can be hacked easily through brute computing power, however with quantum IoT, hackers would not be able to access the devices, as the state of the particles where the data is store would be required to be replicated, and if the data is stored in quantum blockchain, it would be impossible to hack the system.

Lack of Confidence: As per state of IoT Security report by Gemalto, 65 percent of consumers are concerned about a hacker controlling their IoT device, while 60 percent are concerned about data being leaked. This stat shows that there is a massive concern about adoption of IoT device currently but with Quantum IoT coming into place, this notion will change drastically.

 Internet: With the current IoT infrastructure, there have been numerous instances where the devices have not been able to send the data to the cloud, these devices also don’t have enough memory to store the data. With the development of Quantum Internet, which will allow information to be carried from one entangled quantum particles to be reflected to another quantum entangled particles, the future IoT devices would not have problems in transferring the data.

Analytics

It is estimated that 90% of the data that we currently have, was generated in the last 2 years and we are creating approximately 2.5 quintillion of data every day. We have more data than to know what to do with it and this data generation will exponentially increase in the coming years. the classical computers today don’t have the necessary speed to get relevant insights out the data but with quantum computing, we will have the necessary speed to analyse the data. Few examples where quantum computing would really be helpful would be

Financial Services: Risk modelling, fraud detection, Security, high frequency trading, automation of back end tasks, Query Answering using NLP

Aerospace and Aviation: Fuel consumption, Optimal speed of the flight, Advanced flight management computers, Aircraft safety, Flight Routing systems

Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare: Drug Testing, Drug Discovery, drug interaction, Optimal Radiation during therapy, Genomic medicine for individuals, Protection of health data

Telecommunication: Efficient database searching, Quantum Communication, Quantum Internet

Defence and Space: ultra secure Encryption of communication satellites, accurate navigation, government cyber security application

Animation: Real time Rendering, Real time computation of Vector and Matrix operations, Real time computation of Geometrical calculations

Automobile: Efficient means of transportation, Self- Driving Vehicles, Vehicle Safety, Accurate Navigation

Logistics and Supply Chain: Efficient Route planning, solution to Travelling Salesman problem, Complex optimization problems, Accurate Fleet Management, Efficient Traffic Management

Businesses are always sceptical when a new technology is introduced and the same is applicable with quantum computing. Most of the businesses say that this technology would at least take 5-10 years to create a significant impact, but large-scale pilots would be tested in the next one or two years. To stay ahead of the curve, businesses should start evaluating on how this technology will impact team and start creating dedicated teams who will monitor the advances and create use-cases using quantum computing. This will not only help in staying ahead of the curve but will help them bring disruptive solutions to change on how we live our lives.