March of the clever machines

Quantum computers are a work in progress, but they could eventually help us make better decisions in a range of areas

-  ANNETTE SAMPSON

A single adult human is composed of more than seven octillion atoms (that's 7,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000). To build a conventional computer with the same power as IBM's new 127-qubit (we'll come to them in a moment) Eagle processor, the number of traditional computer bits needed would be more than the number of atoms contained in all the Earth's population - more than 7.5 billion people.

It's not hard to see why quantum computing is a potentially game-changing and mind-blowing science.

The technology isn't perfected yet, but predictions are that the problems they could solve are way beyond the realm of traditional computing, including better ways of managing risk and optimising returns in investment portfolios.

But first, the science. According to IBM's manager for quantum applications research and software, Stefan Woerner, today's computers manipulate individual bits to do calculations and store information as a 1 or a 0.

Quantum computers rely on qubits, which can be both land 0 at once in a combination of states. He says it's a fundamentally different way to process information.

"They are not a replacement for classical [computers]," he says. "They complement our classical systems by possibly being able to solve some forms of intractable problems that become extremely large or time-consuming during computation."

Peter Turner, the chief executive of the Sydney Quantum Academy, says quantum computing is part of the wider development of quantum physics with technology being developed in three key areas: sensing, communications and information technology.

Who stands to benefit

He says Australia has been at the forefront of quantum technology, though much of the development of things like quantum computers is happening overseas with companies such as Google and IBM.