Will You be Ready when Quantum Computing becomes Mainstream?

Are you motivated enough to explore a new area of foundation technology?

Andi Sama — CIO, Sinergi Wahana Gemilang with Cahyati S. Sangaji

In Summary
- The next wave of computing technology is coming, quantum computing. The technology may finally reach its time for potential practical implementations, by 2030 or so.
- While hybrid classical-quantum would be mostly the best possible approach on the practical implementations, the availability of scalable universal quantum hardwares with millions of stable qubits will be the key to enable future innovations.
- In addition to quantum computing, there are more, like quantum communication and quantum sensing. 

Many years ago, Steve Jobs — Apple's late co-founder, chairman, and CEO, said, "You have to be burning with an idea, problem, or a wrong that you want to right. You'll never stick it out if you're not passionate enough from the start."

The next big thing to start revolutionizing Information Technology and many areas in the next decade or so could be based on quantum technology, quantum computing in particular. Quantum computing differs significantly from classical computing as we know it today. Classical computing has powered our mobile phones, laptops, servers, cars, home appliances, and many critical systems in diverse industries.

The hardest part of learning new things is getting started. Once started, your passion will take you anywhere.

Are you motivated enough to explore a new area of foundation technology as it is emerging toward industrialization? The hardest part of learning new things is getting started. Once started, your passion will take you anywhere.

While researchers have been utilizing some of the most powerful supercomputers nowadays to perform complex research that usually takes many years to complete, the availability of quantum computing promises a significant improvement in speeding up the process — finding a cure for cancer and many other complex diseases by analyzing complex molecules and their behaviors, speeding up the chemical reaction at room temperature by finding the suitable catalyst through simulation and optimizing complicated supply chain routes in transportation scheduling to mention just a few potential use cases.

Cloud, Big data, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been critical drivers within the last decade. Quantum Computing has been an exciting new emerging technology area, promising a leap towards 2030 and beyond, especially since the invention of two famous quantum algorithms, Shor's and Grover's algorithms, in 1995 and 1996, respectively (Andi Sama, Cahyati S. Sangaji, 2021).

• Shor's algorithm promises a significant speed improvement in factoring multiplication of two prime numbers, the foundation of many cryptography implementations such as securing our Internet Banking transactions.
• The Grover algorithm opens up the possibility of performing unstructured database searches with notable speed improvement.

If quantum computers with enough processing power are available right now, the promise of significant speedup will open up many possibilities for practical applications. By processing power — for simplification, to have enough numbers (millions) of stable logical quantum bits (qubits). While at the current state of technology advancements, universal quantum computers support only slightly over a few hundred qubits.

Schrödinger's Cat — A Thought Experiment illustrating Superposition
Put a cat in a box with decaying radioactive material and a Geiger counter.
The radioactive can decay and emit alpha particles at a random time. Geiger counter can then generate electrons to energize the hammer to smash open the deadly gas flask (TheInformationPhilosopher, 2021).

1. Potential Early Use-Cases for the Industries

Quantum technology covers diverse areas, such as quantum sensing, quantum communication, and quantum computing. Quantum communication, like QKD (Quantum Key Distribution), is the more mature area (TRL 7 — Technical Readiness Level) for many potential implementations compared to quantum sensing and quantum computing. Quantum Computing is at TRL 3.

More quantum hardware and simulation tools are increasingly available, although not yet enough for practical applied "useful" applications (Quantum. Tech, 2022).

• Fortune 500 companies are trying to identify potential use cases.
• Many quantum providers now provide Quantum Infrastructure professional access, even if it's still in research facilities.
• Invest early in "potential quantum business cases" and dynamically rearrange priorities as technologies mature.
• To better adopt any new technology, such as Quantum, we must ensure that it fits in and improves the Enterprise workflow. If not, the technology can not be helpful for businesses (it does not contribute to the bottom line).

Some of the early use cases are as follows:

• Quantum sensing for Airlines. In search of an alternative to dependency on GPS for PNT (Position, Navigation, Timing). Including quantum secure connectivity and quantum computational fluid dynamics (Quantum CFD) for aircraft design. GPS-free PNT is expected to have many potential applications in many areas enabled by quantum communication.
• Quantum cryptography for Banking — HNDL (Harvest Now Decrypt Later) or SNDL (Store Now Decrypt Later). The potential for an attacker to attack data at rest or data in motion by storing (or 'stealing') the data now, then decrypting later (many years later) when the capable quantum computer is available. The future has so many good or bad potentials that are unknown before millions of qubits of quantum computers are available. Target quantum resilience on cyber security, get a free demo from solution providers whenever possible, and expect quantum error correction to be improved soon.
• Quantum cryptography for the Payment Service Provider. Mitigate future risks of quantum attacks in the future. Anticipate potential risks in the future. The main challenge is more on utilizing big data.

Early use cases in Government agencies mainly focus on quantum sensing and communication. Quantum communication includes quantum cryptography.

• Quantum at Public Transportation. E.g., quantum sensing at airports.
• Quantum in Defense. E.g., PNT in the area of the sensor, computing, and communication.
• Quantum in Space Exploration. E.g., free-space secure quantum communication.
• Quantum in Airforce. E.g., leverage distributed quantum entanglement.

The commercialization of quantum computing use cases can be broadly categorized into three areas (Andi Sama, 2021): Machine Learning, Simulation, and Optimization.

• Machine Learning creates models to predict the outcome, given sufficient historical data. Quantum Machine Learning is possible, e.g., by doing transfer learning in which part of the trained model that has been trained classically is optimized with a quantum computer. Interested readers may refer to the article discussing Quantum Machine Learning, "Hello Tomorrow — I am a Hybrid QML" (Andi Sama, 2020).
• Quantum chemistry simulation that performs quantum simulation on finding the suitable catalyst (that does not require high temperature) for chemical reactions can significantly improve new material discovery in material science. Likewise, molecular biology and healthcare research (e.g., drug discovery) include a process similar to chemistry research. In this case, quantum simulations can replace laboratory experiments.
• Optimization aims to minimize or maximize a given objective function, given constraints. Optimization can reduce travel distance in a logistic network or maximize capacity and system throughput to avoid conflicts and backlogs.

2. Quantum Computing as The Next Wave in Computing

For most of us who are not physicists by formal education, exploring and learning about quantum technology — whether quantum computing, quantum sensing, or quantum communication is challenging. It is expected that quantum technology will eventually come to have a few practical applications to solve some of the world's most challenging problems that are tough to solve within a reasonable time (many years), even with the most sophisticated classical supercomputers.

Classical computers are computers we have used for many years (based on binary digit—bit). Quantum computers are based on quantum bit (qubit). A single bit can be either 0 or 1 at any one time. In contrast, a two-state qubit (can be more than two states) can be 0 and 1 simultaneously until measured.

Starting with IBM in 2016, more big industry players and startups have provided cloud access to quantum computers (Quantum Computing as a Service) and related quantum software development kits, whether developed in-house or through strategic partnerships. Although not an exhaustive list, others include Alibaba, Google, D-Wave, IonQ, Intel, Rigetti, AWS, Microsoft, Xanadu, Zapata Computing, HPE, and Microsoft.

In a discussion (Andi Sama, 2021) at one of the recent quantum technology conferences, it was revealed that "it is now too early to know among competing quantum technologies that build the qubits, who will be the winner. "Some industry players investing in quantum computing technologies to build quantum computer hardware are D-Wave, IBM, Intel, Google, IonQ, Xanadu, HPE, and Honeywell.

On the hardware side, scalable quantum computers' construction towards thousands and millions of qubits is still in active research in Universities or Industries. We expect substantial advancements in the 2030s and beyond. We are now in the "Early Industrial Era for Quantum Computing," according to Prof. John Preskill, an American theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.

As we are now in the era of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ), we do expect to see Fault-Tolerant-Quantum Computers (FTQC) closed by the year 2035 (Antonio Manzalini, 2020).

In NISQ-era — IBM, with its 4,000+ logical qubits plan by 2025 (IBM, 2022), expects that 2025 could be the inflection point for having practical applications of quantum computing. With its current 127-qubit quantum computer capability, IBM has released 433 qubits and plans to release 1,121-qubit quantum computers by the end of 2023 and 100,000 qubits (yes, one hundred thousand logical qubits) in the next 10+ years.

Google, Xanadu, IonQ, and others have also been racing toward FTQC. The big challenge now is that a logical typical qubit needs to be built from many physical qubits to be fault-tolerant. As many as 1,000 physical qubits are required to make one logical qubit.

In the future, there may be a time when a material science breakthrough will enable the creation of a high-fidelity logical qubit without much effort to build it from hundreds of physical qubits, compensating for quantum error correction. When that time comes, the business impact of creating millions of logical qubits may accelerate many developments in commercial applications.

Aggressive Venture Capitalists (VCs) may spread the investments in promising technologies, hoping that a few will come as winners. Others may wait and see or place their investment in quantum computing through syndication to share the risks. Investors may invest in safer areas like the software framework that can utilize multiple future scalable quantum hardware technologies that do not exist yet.

Available technologies to build qubits exist and are being pursued by various industry players (Antonio Manzalini, 2020):

• They are superconducting qubits (Superposition of current flowing in superconductors) — IBM, Rigetti, Google, Alibaba.
• Spin qubits (qubits encoded in the spin of electrons) — Intel.
• Topological qubits (quasi-particles like Majorana particles) — Microsoft.
• Ion trap qubits (ion trapped in electric fields) — IonQ, Honeywell, IQT.
• Neutral atom qubits (atoms trapped in magnetic or optical fields) — Cloud Quanta, Atom Computing.
• Photonics qubits (qubits are encoded in states of photons) — Psi Quantum, Xanadu, ORCA.

To explore more, interested readers may refer to (Andi Sama, 2021) as well as to the following article:

• Andi Sama, 2020, "The Race in Achieving Quantum Supremacy & Quantum Advantage."

3. Starting to Learn is Easy

In everything we do, the most important is to start somewhere. Learning quantum computing is no exception.

Starting is easy. However, keeping it consistent and learning to improve our skills is only possible if we are passionate about doing so.

We can explore so many resources on the Internet with different degrees of complexity. Finding ones for beginners may be challenging. Googling for "quantum computing" on the Internet may return links full of math descriptions. Still, it is hard, especially for those with no engineering background, not to mention a formal education in quantum physics.

One may explore the benefit of quantum computing for some of the world's most challenging and unsolved complex problems. Interested readers may refer to the following article:

• Andi Sama, 2022, “Quantum.Tech 2022: Next Generation Insights of Technology Innovations."
• Andi Sama, 2021, "Quantum Computing, Challenges & Opportunities — QCaaS, Investment, Key Industry Players & Startups, Potential Applications, Hardware, and Software."
• "Andi Sama, 2021b, "Quantum Computing, Communication, and Sensing —
  The Potentials and Commercial Applications."

For those curious to explore more, getting our hands dirty by digging into a few introductory technical materials is helpful to get some more understanding. The following can be some good resources to start:

• Andi Sama, Cahyati S. Sangaji, 2021a, "Embarking on a Journey to Quantum Computing — Without Physics Degree."
• Andi Sama, Cahyati S. Sangaji, 2021, "Qubit, An Intuition #1 — First Baby Steps in Exploring the Quantum World."

My Journey to Quantum Computing

Having early exposure to advanced & emerging technologies has been one of my passions, somehow realized to some extent for many years through working in IBM Indonesia, IBM Asia Pacific, an IT Integration Company in Indonesia, and now in Sinergi Wahana Gemilang, a Value Added Distributor in Indonesia.

My interest in Quantum Computing started in May 2016 when IBM launched IBM Quantum Experience, accessible from the IBM Cloud. My curiosity was tickling. This new area of advanced and emerging technology seemed exciting and worth exploring.

In addition to quantum computing, there are more emerging areas, such as quantum communication and quantum sensing. Interested readers may refer to (Quantum. Tech, 2022).

Since restarting to learn Quantum Computing in 2020, Quantum Computing has been hard. My educational background in computer engineering (bachelor's degree), computer science, and business administration (two master's degrees) do not provide enough foundation knowledge for learning Quantum Computing. However, being consistent in learning is the key.

Interested readers may refer to the following article:

• Andi Sama, Cahyati S. Sangaji, 2022, "My Journey to the Exciting World of Quantum Computing — A Novice's Perspective" — To publish in late 2022.

References

• Andi Sama, 2022a, “Quantum.Tech 2022: Next Generation Insights of Technology Innovations."
• Andi Sama, 2022, "My First 2022 Business Travel in Covid-19 Pandemic — Is it worth it?", June.
• Andi Sama, 2021, "Quantum Computing, Challenges & Opportunities — QCaaS, Investment, Key Industry Players & Startups, Potential Applications, Hardware, and Software."
• Andi Sama, 2020, "Hello Tomorrow — I am a Hybrid QML."
• Andi Sama, Cahyati S. Sangaji, 2021, "Qubit, An Intuition #6 — Two Famous Quantum Algorithms, Shor's and Grover Algorithms."
• Antonio Manzalini, 2020, "The Second Quantum Revolution is underway."
• AWS, 2022, "Amazon Braket Quantum Computing Service."
• D-Wave, 2021, "A Practical Approach to Quantum Computing."
• IBM, 2022, "IBM Unveils New Roadmap to Practical Quantum Computing Era; Plans to Deliver 4,000+ Qubit System", May.
• Intel, 2022, "Intel and QuTech Collaborate to Produce Silicon Qubits at Scale," April.
• Quantum.Tech, 2022, "Next Generation Insights of Technology Innovations," June 2022, In-person — to publish in July 2022.
• Zapata, 2022, "Build and deploy quantum-ready applications® on Orquestra."
• TheInformationPhilosopher, 2021, “Schrödinger’s Cat.”