Prepare for the Quantum Computing Revolution

A decade yet, but also will happen as we need combinatorial solutions. 

Prepare for the Quantum Computing Revolution.

Expert: Now is the time to prepare for the quantum computing revolution

by Karen Roby in Innovation  on August 24, 2021, 1:41 PM PST

Though quantum computing is likely five to 10 years away, waiting until it happens will put your organization behind. Don't play catch-up later.

TechRepublic's Karen Roby spoke with Christopher Savoie, CEO and co-founder of Zapata Computing, a quantum application company, about the future of quantum computing. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.  ... 

Christoper Savoie: There are two types of quantum-computing algorithms if you will. There are those that will require what we call a fault-tolerant computing system, one that doesn't have error, for all intents and purposes, that's corrected for error, which is the way most classical computers are now. They don't make errors in their calculations, or at least we hope they don't, not at any significant rate. And eventually we'll have these fault-tolerant quantum computers. People are working on it. We've proven that it can happen already, so that is down the line. But it's in the five- to 10-year range that it's going to take until we have that hardware available. But that's where a lot of the promises for these exponentially faster algorithms. So, these are the algorithms that will use these fault-tolerant computers to basically look at all the options available in a combinatorial matrix.

So, if you have something like Monte Carlo simulation, you can try significantly all the different variables that are possible and look at every possible combination and find the best optimal solution. So, that's really, practically impossible on today's classical computers. You have to choose what variables you're going to use and reduce things and take shortcuts. But with these fault-tolerant computers, for significantly many of the possible solutions in the solution space, we can look at all of the combinations. So, you can imagine almost an infinite amount or an exponential amount of variables that you can try out to see what your best solution is. In things like CCAR [Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review], Dodd-Frank [Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act] compliance, these things where you have to do these complex simulations, we rely on a Monte Carlo simulation.

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SEE: The CIO's guide to quantum computing (free PDF) (TechRepublic)