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Quantum Computing and The Financial System - Spooky Action at A Distance - , WP - 21 - 71, March 2021 - 7

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8 views

Quantum Computing and The Financial System - Spooky Action at A Distance - , WP - 21 - 71, March 2021 - 7

Uploaded by

Philipp Sellin
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© © All Rights Reserved
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7

at that moment—to perform a specific computation task in just 200 seconds, while they
estimated that the most powerful digital supercomputer available at that time would take
10,000 years to execute that task. Google engineers presented it as proof of quantum
“supremacy”, which is the confirmation that quantum computers may perform tasks virtually
impossible for traditional computers (Arute et al., 2019). A competing research team from
IBM disputed Google’s claims, while promoting their own quantum computers. IBM claims
that Google’s estimates are inaccurate, and that the world’s fastest computer, Summit—built
by IBM—could be modified to obtain the same results in about 3 days (Pednault et al.,
2019), though they have not shown that in practice. Cementing claims for quantum
advantage, in December 2020 a team of researchers from the University of Science and
Technology of China in Hefei announced that their photon quantum computer, named
Jiuzhang, performed in 200 seconds a calculation that on one of the most powerful
supercomputers in the world would take 2.5 billion years to complete (Zhong et al., 2020).
Importantly, they carried out the task on a photonic quantum computer working at room
temperature.

Alongside, many other technological companies—from industry leaders to start-ups and


universities—are working on quantum computers, increasing the probability of a break-
through. As of January 2021, IBM has deployed 28 quantum computers for public and
commercial use through its cloud services. In September 2020, IBM released a roadmap to
produce a 1,000-plus qubit device called Quantum Condor by the end of 2023. Effectively, it
means doubling or tripling the number of cubits in the quantum computer each year.
Microsoft and Amazon also have launched beta versions of quantum computing cloud
services—Microsoft Azure and AWS Bracket—powered by suppliers such as 1Qbit, Rigetti,
IonQ, and D-Wave. Around the world, there are at least 87 known projects underway to build
quantum systems using different core technologies. 5

To reap the benefits of quantum computing, researchers need to build quantum machines that
compute with lower error rates. Superposition and entanglement are fragile states. The
interaction of qubits with the environment produces computation errors. Any external
disturbances or noise, such as heat, light or vibrations, inevitably yanks qubits out of their
quantum state and turns them into regular bits. Classical computers are also prone to random
computational errors, albeit in much lower rates. By employing redundancy, error correction
processes enable classical computers to produce practical, error-free computations. However,
such techniques are not applicable to quantum physics because of the no-cloning principle: it
is physically impossible to copy the running state of a qubit.

In 1994, Peter Shor proposed a theoretical quantum error correcting code, achieved by
storing the information of one qubit onto a highly entangled state of several qubits. This
scheme uses many ordinary qubits to create a single error-free entity: the formers are
denominated as physical qubits, whereas the latter as logical qubits. But just adding more
qubits might not boost a machine’s performance. The frequency of errors in delicate qubits
and their operations, caused by noises, tends to increase as more qubits are connected. IBM
has developed the concept of quantum volume to measure progress in quantum computing,

5
“Uncertainty principals: Commercialising quantum computers.”—The Economist, September 26, 2020.

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