Indian start-up debuts on global quantum computing stage

An Indian company called QNu Labs aims to be a global player in the futuristic field of quantum computing, after becoming the world’s fourth company to build a deployable “Quantum-Safe Security” product.

- AJAI SHUKLA

Only three companies worldwide can boast of such an achievement. Quantum-Safe Security is regarded as a relatively small, billion-dollar niche in the overall field of quantum computing, which could soon be a trillion-dollar industry.

The Bengaluru-based QNu Labs has matched global firms QuintessenceLabs, ID Quantique, and Toshiba in developing Quantum-Safe Security solutions. These safeguard sensitive data by upgrading conventional network encryption to foil “hacking” attempts from hostile quantum computers. In the emerging era of “quantum supremacy”, hackers using quantum computing can quickly crack contemporary encryption algorithms.

Quantum computing relies on vastly enhanced computing capacity to quickly crack problems that would take conventional computers years to solve.

The benefits of supercomputing were highlighted last fortnight in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, when IBM’s Summit supercomputer quickly identified 77 chemical compounds that might form the basis of an eventual drug against the virus.

A quantum computer could do the job far faster. Last October, Google’s Sycamore processor — a quantum computer — performed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years to solve.