IBM Logo presented during CES 2016 (Photo : Getty Images/Ethan Miller)
IBM is trying to get people interested in quantum computing, a far cry technology that uses principles of quantum physics to make quantum level computing possible. The IBM Quantum Experience would let researchers explore the world of qubits.
International Business Machines or IBM had previously announced that it will allow scientists to play around with its quantum computer, the IBM Quantum Experience. The quantum computer runs on the IBM Cloud and allows basic operations such as running basic algorithms, Tech News World reported.
Quantum physics is an unexplored realm of electrons and their ability to allow quantum computing. The role of electrons in everyday computers is absolutely undeniable, but the point particle still has to travel the length of a circuit to make computations.
Even if electron travels within a microchip, it is still a slow processing compared to what quantum computing can offer. The machine language understands only two alphabets or digits, that of 1's and 0'. By the virtue of quantum physics, these two variables can be stored in an electron's clockwise or anti-clockwise rotation.
This will significantly change the size of computers. Microchips will be shrunken to nanochips and even pico-chips. A quantum computer the size of a needle's head would be more powerful than any supercomputer available today. The implications are limitless.
However, as the electronic flow is converging to quantum physics level, the instability caused by the heat also increases, which causes discrepancies in quantum processing. Controlling electron's position, rotation and reading from it is the very challenge for the quantum computing.
IBM Thomas James Watson Research center located in New York houses the world's first 5-qubit processor which uses superconducting metals on a silicon chip. A practical quantum computer is still lightyear's away but IBM's quantum process marks the beginning of this journey.
IBM's quantum computer is completely research oriented, which means one cannot expect it to really perform the complex calculations. 5-qubit is too little a processing power to run practical applications, but scientists, researchers, and hobbyist can use it to run short calculations with a programming extremely different from typical computer languages.
Today's laptops, smartphones, smartwatches and all the electronic devices that have a processor borrow its processing power from classical physics in the form of a bit. Quantum physics offers "quantum bits" or qubits that work incredibly fast.
Jerry Chow is the manager at IBM's T.J.W Research Center who along with his fellow researchers showed how quantum computing can be scaled up to the level where one day it will beat current computers.
IBM's quantum computer might be the first 5-qubit processor, but it is not the only example of the quantum physics application. Back in 2004, Google had also created an online quantum simulator for research purposes which offered 6 to 22 qubits.
For quantum researchers and enthusiast, the opportunity to play with IBM's quantum physics based computer is available on the company's official website. The following video tells more about the story.
