Gadgetory

it has 80 years all computers have worked basically the same way a series of electrical circuits switching between off and on zero and one but that could be about to change quantum computing would enable exponential jumps and computing power turning the entire industry on its head and according to Microsoft's Research Lab it could happen in the next 10 years where a conventional computer uses electrical circuits as bits a quantum computer runs on quantum bits or qubits tiny particles magnetically suspended an extreme cold just fractions of a degree above absolute zero the idea is to keep each qubit in a state of superposition so it's simultaneously a 1 and a 0 that allows for something researchers call a quantum speed-up with the speed-up each qubit increases computing power exponentially with enough qubits that power starts to grow really fast it won't help much if you just want to check your email but it lets researchers tackle complex problems like weather prediction or materials analysis that are still really difficult with conventional computing Google and Microsoft are particularly interested they both formed quantum labs hiring away a lot of the top scientists working on quantum computing but that speed-up isn't happening yet or at least we haven't seen proof of it company called d-wave is already making and selling quantum computers to different labs including Google's quantum AI lab but a lot of researchers say the computers can't actually demonstrate a quantum speed-up that means it is a quantum computer but it's not good at any of the things we want quantum computers to be good of course d-wave disagrees but it's really hard to say who's right it's one of the weirdest things about quantum computing it might already be here and we just don't know it yet you