However, although Google claimed to have reached this milestone two years ago, the realization of quantum advantages did not solve a practical problem that classical computers could not solve. IBM and other companies quickly showed that some so-called advantages of Google's quantum computing system could be offset by adjusting classical computers.
Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics that studies the behavior of subatomic particles, and quantum computing using mysterious quantum mechanics goes beyond the limits of classical Newtonian physics, and achieving exponential growth of computing power has become a long-term dream of scientific and technological circles.
Classical computers use bits as the unit for storing information. Bits are binary, and one bit stands for "0" or "1". However, in quantum computers, the situation will be completely different. Quantum computers take quantum bits as information units, and quantum bits can mean "0", "1" and "1 and both 0", which means that quantum computers can superimpose all possible "0" and "65438+".
That is to say, the 2-bit register in the classical computer can only store one binary number at a time, while the 2-bit qubit register in the quantum computer can keep the superposition of all four states at the same time. When the number of quantum bits is n, the quantum processor performs one operation on n quantum bits, which is equivalent to 2n operations on classical bits, which greatly improves the processing speed of the quantum computer. Compared with traditional computers, quantum computers can achieve exponential scale expansion and explosive growth of computing power, forming a "quantum advantage."
In addition to improving computing power, another core advantage of quantum computing is to reduce energy consumption. As we all know, energy consumption is a major technical problem of classical computers. The processor performs XOR operation on the input two strings of data, but the output result is only a set of data, and the amount of data will naturally decrease after calculation. According to the law of conservation of energy, the disappearing data signal will inevitably generate heat.
Therefore, the higher the integration of classical computing, the more difficult it is to dissipate heat. With the asymptotic limit of Moore's law, the improvement of computing power in the future can only rely on piling up more computing chips, which will lead to greater energy consumption.
However, in quantum computing, how many groups of data are input and how many groups of data are output, the amount of data does not change during the calculation process, so there is no energy consumption during the calculation process. This means that energy consumption is only generated at the time of final measurement. Classical calculation will produce energy consumption in the calculation process of each bit.
Under the core advantages of improving computing power and reducing energy consumption, quantum computing is bound to be a new technology to get rid of the current technological path of computer industry development and subvert the future.
At present, for some traditional industries, the computing pressure faced by a large number of R&D links has appeared, especially those industries that carry out R&D in the molecular field, which consume huge time and cost with the computing power of human existing science and technology, such as biopharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy and so on. There are other scientific and technological industries that require high computing power, and they are also areas where quantum computing can be commercialized, such as search, digital security, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the currently surging meta-universe.
Undoubtedly, if there is no super-computing technology such as quantum technology, it will be difficult for these industries and fields to rely on the current chip and computer computing technology to process massive data and realize the ultra-long-distance, ultra-high-speed and ultra-safe transmission, calculation and application of data.
Taking computational chemistry as an example, simulating a relatively basic molecule (such as caffeine) will require a traditional computer with power of 10, which is equivalent to 10% of the number of atoms on the earth. Simulating penicillin requires 10 bit to the 86th power-this number is larger than the sum of atoms in Hubble volume. Traditional computers can never handle such tasks, but in the quantum field, such calculations are possible.
At present, quantum computing has attracted more and more attention. As a new technology that breaks Moore's Law and achieves exponential growth of computer computing power, it has attracted countless technology companies and large academic groups to invest in it.
In fact, although there are different predictions about the future of the quantum computing industry, almost all viewpoints think that its scale will be huge. As Doug Finke, the operator of Quantum Computing Report, said, "I think the market of quantum computing will reach 1 billion dollars by 2025, and may reach 5-1billion dollars by 2030." The value of the latter is equivalent to 10%-20% in today's high-performance computing market. According to Honeywell's estimation, the value of quantum computing may reach 1 trillion dollars in the next 30 years.
Based on the broad market prospect of quantum computing, it is not difficult to understand why the commercialization of quantum computing can attract a large number of public and private investments. Mainstream venture capitalists and large companies have begun to bet on private quantum computing companies. Companies such as Google, IBM and Honeywell have invested heavily in quantum computing, including self-research, private equity investment and cooperation. According to a recent report, only in 202 1 year, more than 1 billion dollars of private investment was used for quantum computing research.
Among them, most projects and companies are in the early stage, mostly seed round, A round, and even incubation/acceleration state. It is worth noting that the investment subject of quantum computing has great particularity. Due to the super computing power of quantum computing and the encryption of the communication network composed of quantum cryptography, "national team investment" has played an indispensable role in promoting it.
In fact, in addition to the participation of mainstream investment institutions and large companies, the role of "national teams" such as DOE, CIA, NASA, STDC and Telstra in Canada has also played a significant role in boosting. They promote the scientific research and commercialization of quantum computing in the form of donation, investment and incubation. For example, one of Google's quantum computing projects involves working with NASA to apply the optimization capabilities of this technology to space travel.
In addition, the US government is prepared to invest about 654.38+0.2 billion US dollars in the National quantum scheme (NQI) project. The project was officially launched at the end of 20 18, which provided an overall framework for the scientific research and development of quantum information in academia and private sector. The British National Quantum Technology Program (NQTP) was launched in 20 13, and promised to invest 10 billion pounds in 10. At present, the program has entered the second stage.
For China, although China science and technology companies entered the field of quantum computing later than the United States, in recent years, industry-leading companies and research institutes have also begun to lay out in the field of quantum computing. During the period of 20021NPC and CPPCC, quantum information technology was first mentioned, which became one of the key breakthrough technologies in China during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period and one of the seven strategic areas of "national security and all-round development".
In terms of technology giants, Tencent entered the field of quantum computing on 20 17, and proposed to adopt "ABC2.0" technology layout, that is, to build future-oriented infrastructure by using artificial intelligence, robots and quantum computing. Huawei has been engaged in the research of quantum computing since 20 12. As an important research field of data center laboratory of Huawei Academia Sinica, its research interests include quantum computing software, quantum algorithms and applications. On the one hand, Ali conducts full-stack research and development with hardware as the core by establishing a laboratory, and on the other hand, he builds an ecosystem with partners in the upper, middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain to explore landing applications.
It can be seen that both technology companies and start-ups have high hopes and enthusiasm for quantum computing.
The subversion of quantum computing is foreseeable, but there is still a long way to go before quantum computing can really be put into useful production and life. Because technology is still in the development stage, when quantum technology is from academic landing to enterprise commercialization, the industry still has the realistic dilemma of technological breakthrough and mass production.
At present, the commercialization of quantum computing is still in the stage of technical exploration. Although quantum computing has made some major breakthroughs in theory and experiment at present, some countries, including the United States, Europe and China, have also made breakthroughs and achievements in quantum technology to varying degrees, and also have some corresponding commercial applications. But at present, these commercial applications are still in the early stage, or in the stage of technical exploration and application.
For example, quantum bits need quantum coherence to form quantum entanglement, which is equivalent to that a classical computer needs a transistor with gain. But how to achieve large-scale and coherence is the biggest challenge for quantum computer systems. These problems are difficult to solve even in theory, because quantum information can't be copied, and the subsystems in quantum computer are intertwined, which leads to all designs to think from a global perspective.
Moreover, the quantum computer, which is not perfect at present, needs more improvement. Shallow quantum circuits need higher gate fidelity and greater stability to limit decoherence. The quantum annealing machine needs to be improved in connectivity, control accuracy and coherence time.
From the point of view of commercialization, at present, the enterprises of quantum technology track have hardly realized accumulated profits. Due to the high technical barriers, the R&D investment of enterprises is as high as billions, but the products are still in trial and error, so it is difficult to develop commercialization. Take IonQ as an example. As a unicorn company focusing on quantum computing, according to the financial data released by the company, the company achieved revenue of $200,000 and $0 in 2020, while net losses were $8.926 million and $154.24 million, respectively, with extremely low degree of commercialization, and most of the investment funds were R&D expenses.
Doug Fink, after tracking more than 200 quantum technology start-ups, predicted that most of them would cease to exist after 10, at least in the current form. He said: "There may be some winners, but there will also be many losers. Some will go bankrupt, some will be acquired and some will be merged."
You can watch a play. Although the current quantum computing technology has made a series of breakthroughs and is in the process of continuous breakthroughs, governments all over the world attach great importance to it and have invested a lot of financial and human resources, but it still needs a long way to go before it can be truly commercialized on a large scale. Scale commercialization requires technical stability, which is essentially different from experimental and small-scale applications.
At present, the core problem of quantum computing technology is still in the empirical physics stage, and the theoretical physics stage is basically mature. But when we enter the empirical physics stage, what we need is to make this elusive and extremely unstable quantum entanglement a controllable "stable" technology.
Generally speaking, the future of quantum computing is optimistic, and everything about the commercialization of quantum computing has just begun. So far, we may have only discovered the tip of the iceberg of quantum computing. No matter which technology company is the first to put quantum computing into practical application, or other data service companies, banks, pharmaceutical companies or manufacturers trying to apply this technology, this competition about quantum computing has already begun.