Just Add Quantum

As a kid, I was a big fan of the show, “Quantum Leap”. The main character, Sam Beckett, built some kind of quantum thingamajig and trapped himself in the past. Over five television programming seasons (because apparently quantum technology and time travel doesn’t exist over the summer), Sam jumped through time from one person’s life to another “setting right what once went wrong.”

The writers of Quantum Leap wanted you to know that Sam was really smart. You can’t do quantum stuff if you aren’t smart. Sam had seven college degrees. That’s how super smart he was. I specifically remember hearing that in one of the episodes and thought, “Wow, that’s excessive. He’s probably inventing time travel to avoid a quantum butt load of Ivy League financial loans.”

After the show went off the air, it was a long time before I started hearing the word quantum in my daily life. Yeah, there was the occasional “quantum communicator” reference in Star Trek or something like that. But, in general, quantum wasn’t a word you heard all that often. Especially in the late 1990s.

What I didn’t know at the time, is that in 1997 a man named Anton Zeilinger published his work on “quantum teleportation.” Unlike Sam, time traveling in his fabulous white onesie, Anton Zeilinger is the real deal. So real in fact that his studies on teleportation theory became the backbone of modern quantum computing and quantum communications. And, ultimately, it helped him earn the 2022 Noble Prize in Physics.

Zeilinger’s work has the potential to revolutionize computing and encryption technologies thus making it fuel for yet another technology race between nations. And, for the past thirty years, it had been taking place right under Zeilinger’s nose.

While working at the University of Vienna, Anton Zeilinger had a protege named Jian-Wei Pan. Pan went on to become the leading quantum scientist for China and recognized by Xi Jing Ping as the “Father of Quantum”. Pan’s goal is to make China the world leader in quantum computing and secure communications. Sounds ambitious. But what, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, does that even mean?

There is an argument in the scientific community regarding the true utility of quantum technologies. This debate has nothing to do with Marty McFly time traveling in a Delorean, Antman getting sucked into the Quantum Realm, or Sam Beckett’s white onesie. Quantum, at its’ core, is about three things: the ability to process equations faster (quantum computing), communicate with perfect encryption (quantum communications), and detect things using sensors in ways that have never been feasible (quantum sensing). And that’s just to start. However, no one is sure if that’s what they’ll really do. Or if it’s worth it. That specific debate is referred to as quantum advantage versus quantum supremacy.

Quantum supremacy is the idea that all of these amazing concepts I just mentioned will offer the ability to vastly outpace any competitor. Supplemented by artificial intelligence, quantum supremacy will become the “quantum leap” (see what I did there?) toward a revolution in new computing realities. The idea is that whoever gains quantum supremacy first, wins. Full stop. End of story. The exponential growth of technology will be so steep there will be no catching up.

Quantum advantage, however, questions whether quantum offers solutions that supersede existing technology. Is a Quantum computer more efficient than an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) for example? Well, they’re totally different. Just ask IBM and these people from Youtube. Artificial Intelligence, for example, requires Nvidia GPUs to process their models and a quantum computer wouldn’t be able to do that. In reality, the optimal application will be some kind of hybrid between a central processing unit, a graphics processing unit, and a quantum processing unit. There is also that pesky little issue with quantum computers where they have to operate at 15 millikelvin (yes, that’s a temperature). They are also highly susceptible to ambient noise which makes quantum communications in the earth’s atmosphere or over long distances through fiber optic cables problematic.

The key then, my dear reader, is who will not only win the race to achieve quantum supremacy, but who will first achieve quantum advantage. And just like I write about in “The Hawk Enigma”, the race for AI and quantum is on. I’m excited to see who ends up out front. Yet I’m a little nervous to find out what that means. In the mean time, I think I’ll just strap on a white onesie and get back to writing.