Modern public-key encryption is currently good enough to meet enterprise requirements, according to experts. Most cyberattacks target different parts of the security stack these days unwary users in particular. Yet this stalwart building block of present-day computing is about to be eroded by the advent of quantum computing within the next decade, according to experts.

About 99% of online encryption is vulnerable to quantum computers, said Mark Jackson, scientific lead for Cambridge Quantum Computing, at the Inside Quantum Technology conference in Boston on Wednesday.

Quantum computers those that use the principles of quantum entanglement and superposition to represent information, instead of electrical bits are capable of performing certain types of calculation orders of magnitude more quickly than classical, electronic computers. Theyre more or less fringe technology in 2019, but their development has accelerated in recent years, and experts at the IQT conference say that a spike in deployment could occur as soon as 2024.

Lawrence Gasman, president of IQT, compared the current state of quantum computing development to that of fiber-optic networking in the 1980s a technology with a lot of promise, but one still missing one or two key pieces.

Optical amplifiers were what got optical networking going, he said. Without them, theyd really have never turned into what they are today.

Pure research, the military, and the financial sector are the prime movers behind quantum computing in general and quantum security in particular, according to Gasman. The latter, in particular, has been an enthusiastic early adopter of the technology.

If you look at the amount of money lost to credit card fraud, thats a huge driver, he noted.

A shift to either different types of classical encryption some algorithms have proven to be resistant to quantum computing or to quantum computing-based security is going to be necessary.

Quantum computing-based security technology is effective because it relies on two of the best-known properties of quantum physics the idea that observing a particle changes its behavior, and that paired or entangled particles share the same set of properties as the other.

What this means, in essence, is that both parties to a message can share an identical cipher key, thanks to quantum entanglement. In addition, should a third party attempt to eavesdrop on that sharing, it would break the symmetry of the entangled pairs, and it would be instantly apparent that something fishy was going on.

If everything is working perfectly, everything should be in sync. But if something goes wrong, it means youll see a discrepancy, said Jackson.

Its like a soap bubble, according to Brian Lowy, vice president at ID Quantique SA, a Switzerland-based quantum computing vendor mess with it and it pops.

At some point, youre going to have to factor [quantum computing], he said, noting that, even now, bad actors could download encrypted information now, planning to crack its defenses once quantum computing is equal to the task.

The precise day of the shift will vary by industry, according to Paul Lucier, vice president of sales and business development at quantum computing security vendor Isara.

Devices that have short usage life like smartphones arent in immediate danger, because quantum security technology ought to be sufficiently miniaturized by the time quantum codebreaking is powerful enough to undercut modern public-key encryption.

Its verticals like the automotive industry and the infrastructure sector that have to worry, Lucier said. Anything with a long service life and anything thats expensive to repair and replace is potentially vulnerable.

Thats not to say that its time to rip-and-replace immediately. Standards bodies are expected to approve quantum-safe encryption algorithms at around the same time experts are predicting that quantum-powered decryption threatens modern security, so a hybrid approach is possible.

But the threat is very real, so much so that the National Quantum Initiative Act became law in December of last year. The act calls for official advisory groups to be formed by the executive branch, and directs research funding for further exploration of quantum computing technology.

So be prepared, the experts at the IQT conference all agreed.

We think by 2026, if youre not ready with your systems prepared, youre taking a giant risk, said Lucier.

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Quantum computing will break your encryption in a few ...

Can you give me a simple, concrete explanation of how quantum computers work?

Ive been asked this question a lot. I worked on quantum computing full time for 12 years, wrote 60 or so papers, and co-authored the standard text. But for many years the question stumped me. I had several pat answers, but none really satisfied me or my questioners.

It turns out, though, that there is a satisfying answer to the question, which anyone can understand if theyre willing to spend some time concentrating hard.

To understand the answer, lets back up and think first about why big media outlets like the New York Times and the Economist regularly run stories about quantum computers.

The reason is that quantum computer scientists believe quantum computers can solve problems that are intractable for conventional computers. That is, its not that quantum computers are like regular computers, but smaller and faster. Rather, quantum computers work according to principles entirely different than conventional computers, and using those principles can solve problems whose solution will never be feasible on a conventional computer.

In everyday life, all our experience is with objects which can be directly simulated by a conventional computer. We dont usually think about this fact, but movie-makers rely on it, and we take it for granted special effects are basically just rough computer simulations of events that would be more expensive for the movie makers to create in real life than they are to simulate inside a computer. Much more detailed simulations are used by companies like Boeing to test designs for their latest aircraft, and by Intel to test designs for their latest chips. Everything youve ever seen or done in your life driving a car, walking in the park, cooking a meal all these actions can be directly simulated using a conventional computer.

Because of this, when we think in concrete terms we invariably think about things that can be directly simulated on a conventional computer.

Now, imagine for the sake of argument that I could give you a simple, concrete explanation of how quantum computers work. If that explanation were truly correct, then it would mean we could use conventional computers to simulate all the elements in a quantum computer, giving us a way to solve those supposedly intractable problems I mentioned earlier.

Of course, this is absurd! Whats really going on is that no simple concrete explanation of quantum computers is possible. Rather, there is an intrinsic quantum gap between how quantum computers work, and our ability to explain them in simple concrete terms. This quantum gap is what made it hard for me to answer peoples requests for a concrete explanation. The right answer to such requests is that quantum computers cannot be explained in simple concrete terms; if they could be, quantum computers could be directly simulated on conventional computers, and quantum computing would offer no advantage over such computers. In fact, what is truly interesting about quantum computers is understanding the nature of this gap between our ability to give a simple concrete explanation and whats really going on.

This account of quantum computers is distinctly at odds with the account that appears most often in the mainstream media. In that account, quantum computers work by exploiting what is called quantum parallelism. The idea is that a quantum computer can simultaneously explore many possible solutions to a problem. Implicitly, such accounts promise that its then possible to pick out the correct solution to the problem, and that its this which makes quantum computers tick.

Quantum parallelism is an appealing story, but its misleading. The problem comes in the second part of the story: picking out the correct solution. Most of the time this turns out to be impossible. This isnt just my opinion, in some cases you can mathematically prove its impossible. In fact, the problem of figuring out how to extract the solution, which is glossed over in mainstream accounts, is really the key problem. Its here that the quantum gap lies, and glossing over it does nothing to promote genuine understanding.

None of my discussion to now actually explains how quantum computers work. But its a good first step to understanding, for it prepares you to expect a less concrete explanation of quantum computers than you might at first have hoped for. I wont give a full description here, but I will sketch whats going on, and give you some suggestions for further reading.

Quantum computers are built from quantum bits, or qubits [1], which are the quantum analogue of the bits which make up conventional computers. Heres a magnified picture of a baby quantum computer made up of three Beryllium atoms, which are used to store three qubits:

The atoms are held in place using an atom trap, which you cant see because its out of frame, but which surrounds the atoms, holding them suspended in place using electric and magnetic fields, similar to the way magnets can be used to levitate larger objects in the air.

The atoms in the picture are about three micrometers apart, which means that if you laid a million end to end, they wouldnt quite span the length of a living room. Very fine human hair is about 20 micrometers in diameter itd pretty much cover the width of this photo.

The atoms themselves are about a thousand times smaller than the spacing between the atoms. They look a lot bigger in the picture, and the reason is interesting. Although the atoms are very small, the way the picture was created was by shining laser light on the atoms to light them up, and then taking a photograph. The particles making up the laser light are much bigger than the atoms, which makes the picture come out all blurry; the photo above is basically a very blurry photograph of the atoms, which is why they look so much bigger than they really are.

I called this a baby quantum computer because it has only three qubits, but in fact its pretty close to the state of the art. Its hard to build quantum computers, and adding extra qubits turns out to be tricky. Exactly who holds the record for the most qubits depends on who you ask, because different people have different ideas about what standards need to be met to qualify as a genuine quantum computer. The current consensus for the record is about 5-10 qubits.

Okay, a minor alert is in order. Ive tried to keep this essay as free from mathematics as possible, but the rest of the essay will use a little high-school mathematics. If this is the kind of thing that puts you off, do not be alarmed! You should be able to get the gist even if you skip over the mathematical bits.

How should we describe whats inside a quantum computer? We can give a bare-bones description of a conventional computer by listing out the state of all its internal components. For example, its memory might contains the bits 0,0,1,0,1,1, and so on. It turns out that a quantum computer can also be described using a list of numbers, although how this is done is quite different. If our quantum computer has n qubits (in the example pictured above n = 3), then it turns out that the right way to describe the quantum computer is using a list of 2n numbers. Its helpful to give these numbers labels: the first is s1, the second s2, and so on, so the entire list is:

What are these numbers, and how are they related to the n qubits in our quantum computer? This is a reasonable question in fact, its an excellent question! Unfortunately, the relationship is somewhat indirect. For that reason, Im not going to describe it in detail here, although you can get a better picture from some of the further reading I describe below. For us, the thing to take away is that describing n qubits requires 2n numbers.

One result of this is that the amount of information needed to describe the qubits gets big really quickly. More than a million numbers are needed to describe a 20-qubit quantum computer! The contrast with conventional computers is striking a conventional 20-bit computer needs only 20 numbers to describe it. The reason is that each added qubit doubles the amount of information needed to describe the quantum computer [2]. The moral is that quantum computers get complex far more quickly than conventional computers as the number of components rises.

The way a quantum computer works is that quantum gates are applied to the qubits making up the quantum computer. This is a fancy way of saying that we do things to the qubits. The exact details vary quite a bit in different quantum computer designs. In the example I showed above, it basically involves manipulating the atoms by shining laser light on them. Quantum gates usually involve manipulating just one or two qubits at a time; some quantum computer designs involve more at the same time, but thats a luxury, its not actually necessary. A quantum computation is just a sequence of these quantum gates done in a particular order. This sequence is called a quantum algorithm; it plays the same role as a program for a conventional computer.

The effect of a quantum gate is to change the description s1, s2, of the quantum computer. Let me show you a specific example to make this a bit more concrete. Theres a particular type of quantum gate called a Hadamard gate. This type of gate affects just one qubit. If we apply a Hadamard gate to the first qubit in a quantum computer, the effect is to produce a new description for the quantum computer with numbers t1, t2, given by

t1 = (s1+s2n/2+1)/ 2

t2 = (s2+s2n/2+2)/ 2,

t3 = (s3+s2n/2+3)/ 2,

and so on, down through all 2n different numbers in the description. The details arent important, the salient point is that even though weve manipulated just one qubit, the way we describe the quantum computer changes in an extremely complicated way. Its bizarre: by manipulating just a single physical object, we reshuffle and recombine the entire list of 2n numbers!

Its this reshuffling and recombination of all 2n numbers that is the heart of the matter. Imagine we were trying to simulate whats going on inside the quantum computer using a conventional computer. The obvious way to do this is to track the way the numbers s1, s2, change as the quantum computation progresses. The problem with doing this is that even a single quantum gate can involve changes to all 2n different numbers. Even when n is quite modest, 2n can be enormous. For example, when n = 300, 2n is larger than the number of atoms in the Universe. Its just not feasible to track this many numbers on a conventional computer.

You should now be getting a feeling for why quantum computer scientists believe it is infeasible for a conventional computer to simulate a quantum computer. Whats really clever, and not so obvious, is that we can turn this around, and use the quantum manipulations of all these exponentially many numbers to solve interesting computational problems.

I wont try to tell that story here. But if youre interested in learning more, heres some reading you may find worthwhile.

In an earlier essay I explain why conventional ways of thinking simply cannot give a complete description of the world, and why quantum mechanics is necessary. Going a little further, an excellent lay introduction to quantum mechanics is Richard Feynmans QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. It requires no mathematical background, but manages to convey the essence of quantum mechanics. If youre feeling more adventurous still, Scott Aaronsons lecture notes are a fun introduction to quantum computing. They contain a fair bit of mathematics, but are written so you can get a lot out of them even if some of the mathematics is inaccessible. Scott and Dave Bacon run excellent blogs that occasionally discuss quantum computing, and their blogrolls are a good place to find links to other quantum bloggers.

Finally, if youve enjoyed this essay, you may enjoy some of my other essays, or perhaps like to subscribe to my blog. Thanks for reading!

Thanks to Jen Dodd and Kate Nielsen for providing feedback that greatly improved early drafts of this essay.

Michael Nielsen is a writer living near Toronto, and working on a book about The Future of Science. If youd like to be notified when the book is available, please send a blank email to the.future.of.science@gmail.com with the subject subscribe book. Youll be emailed to let you know when the book is to be published; your email address will not be used for any other purpose.

[1] Ben Schumacher, who coined the term qubit, runs an occasional blog.

[2] Motivated by this observation, in my PhD thesis I posed a tongue-in-cheek quantum analogue of Moores Law: to keep pace with conventional computers, quantum computers need only add a single qubit every two years. So far, things are neck and neck.

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Quantum computing for everyone | Michael Nielsen

IBM is outlining another milestone in quantum computing -- its highest Quantum Volume to date -- and projects that practical uses or so called Quantum Advantage may be a decade away.

Big Blue, which will outline the scientific milestone at the American Physical Society March Meeting, made a bit of a splash at CES 2019 with a display of its Q System quantum computer and has been steadily showing progress on quantum computing.

In other words, that quantum computing buying guide for technology executives may take a while. Quantum Volume is a performance metric that indicates progress in the pursuit of Quantum Advantage. Quantum Advantage refers to the point where quantum applications deliver significant advantages to classical computers.

Also:Meet IBM's bleeding edge of quantum computingCNET

Quantum Volume is determined by the number of qubits, connectivity, and coherence time, plus accounting for gate and measurement errors, device cross talk, and circuit software compiler efficiency.

IBM said its Q System One, which has a 20-qubit processor, produced a Quantum Volume of 16, double the current IBM Q, which has a Quantum Volume of 8. IBM also said the Q System One has some of the lowest error rates IBM has measured.

That progress is notable, but practical broad use cases are still years away. IBM said Quantum Volume would need to double every year to reach Quantum Advantage within the next decade. Faster progress on Quantum Advantage would speed up that timeline. IBM has doubled the power of its quantum computers annually since 2017.

Once Quantum Advantage is hit, there would be new applications, more of an ecosystem and real business use cases. Consumption of quantum computing would still likely be delivered via cloud computing since the technology has some unique characteristics that make a traditional data center look easy. IBM made its quantum computing technology available in 2016 via a cloud service and is working with partners to find business and science use cases.

Here'show quantum computing and classic computing differsvia our recent primer on the subject.

Every classical electronic computer exploits the natural behavior of electrons to produce results in accordance with Boolean logic (for any two specific input states, one certain output state). Here, the basic unit of transaction is the binary digit ("bit"), whose state is either 0 or 1. In a conventional semiconductor, these two states are represented by low and high voltage levels within transistors.

In a quantum computer, the structure is radically different. Its basic unit of registering state is the qubit, which at one level also stores a 0 or 1 state (actually 0 and/or 1). Instead of transistors, a quantum computing obtains its qubits by bombarding atoms with electrical fields at perpendicular angles to one another, the result being to line up the ions but also keep them conveniently and equivalently separated. When these ions are separated by just enough space, their orbiting electrons become the home addresses, if you will, for qubits.

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IBM hits quantum computing milestone, may see 'Quantum ...

Microsoft is focusing on the development of quantum computers that take advantage of cryogenically cooled nanowires. (Microsoft Photo)

REDMOND, Wash. Quantum computing may still be in its infancy but the Microsoft Quantum Network is all grown up, fostered by in-house developers, research affiliates and future stars of the startup world.

The network made its official debut today here at Microsofts Redmond campus, during a Startup Summit that laid out the companys vision for quantum computing and introduced network partners to Microsofts tools of the quantum trade.

Quantum computing stands in contrast to the classical computer technologies that have held sway for more than a half-century. Classical computing is based on the ones and zeroes of bit-based processing, while quantum computing takes advantage of the weird effects of quantum physics. Quantum bits, or qubits, neednt represent a one or a zero, but can represent multiple states during computation.

The quantum approach should be able to solve computational problems that cant easily be solved using classical computers, such as modeling molecular interactions or optimizing large-scale systems. That could open the way to world-changing applications, said Todd Holmdahl, corporate vice president of Microsofts Azure Hardware Systems Group.

Were looking at problems like climate change, Holmdahl said. Were looking at solving big food production problems. We think we have opportunities to solve problems around materials science, personal health care, machine learning. All of these things are possible and obtainable with a quantum computer. We have been talking around here that were at the advent of the quantum economy.

Representatives from 16 startups were invited to this weeks Startup Summit, which features talks from Holmdahl and other leaders of Microsofts quantum team as well as demos and workshops focusing on Microsofts programming tools. (The closest startup to Seattle is 1QBit, based in Vancouver, B.C.)

Over the past year and a half, Microsoft has released a new quantum-friendly programming language called Q# (Q-sharp) as part of its Quantum Development Kit, and has worked with researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and academic institutions around the world to lay the technical groundwork for the field.

A big part of that groundwork is the development ofa universal quantum computer, based on a topological architecture that builds error-correcting mechanisms right into the cryogenically cooled, nanowire-based hardware. Cutting down on the error-producing noise in quantum systems will be key to producing a workable computer.

We believe that our qubit equals about 1,000 of our competitions qubits, Holmdahl said.

Theres lots of competition in the quantum computing field nowadays: IBM, Google and Intel are all working on similar technologies for a universal quantum computer, while Canadas D-Wave Systems is taking advantage of a more limited type of computing technology known as quantum annealing.

This week, D-Wave previewed its plans for a new type of computer topology that it said would reduce quantum noise and more than double the qubit count of its existing platform, from 2,000 linked qubits to 5,000.

But the power of quantum computing shouldnt be measured merely by counting qubits. The efficiency of computation and the ability to reduce errors can make a big difference, said Microsoft principal researcher Matthias Troyer.

For example, a standard approach to simulating the molecular mechanism behind nitrogen fixation for crops could require 30,000 years of processing time, he said. But if the task is structured to enable parallel processing and enhanced error correction, the required runtime can be shrunk to less than two days.

Quantum software engineering is really as important as the hardware engineering, Troyer said.

Julie Love, director of Microsoft Quantum Business Development, said that Microsoft will start out offering quantum computing through Miicrosofts Azure cloud-based services. Not all computational problems are amenable to the quantum approach: Its much more likely that an application will switch between classical and quantum processing and therefore, between classical tools such as the C# programming language and quantum tools such as Q#.

When you work in chemistry and materials, all of these problems, you hit this known to be unsolvable problem, Love said. Quantum provides the possibility of a breakthrough.

Love shies away from giving a firm timetable for the emergence of specific applications but last year, Holmdahl predicted that commercial quantum computers would exist five years from now. (Check back in 2023 to see how the prediction panned out.)

The first applications could well focus on simulating molecular chemistry, with the aim of prototyping better pharmaceuticals, more efficient fertilizers, better batteries, more environmentally friendly chemicals for the oil and gas industry, and a new class of high-temperature superconductors. It might even be possible to address the climate change challenge by custom-designing materials that pull excess carbon dioxide out of the air.

Love said quantum computers would also be well-suited for addressing optimization problems, like figuring out how to make traffic flow better through Seattles urban core; and for reducing the training time required for AI modeling.

That list is going to continue to evolve, she said.

Whenever the subject quantum computing comes up, cryptography has to be mentioned as well. Its theoretically possible for a quantum computer to break the codes that currently protect all sorts of secure transactions, ranging from email encryption to banking protocols.

Love said those code-breaking applications are farther out than other likely applications, due to the huge amount of computation resources that would be required even for a quantum computer. Nevertheless, its not too early to be concerned. We have a pretty significant research thrust in whats called post-quantum crypto, she said.

Next-generation data security is one of the hot topics addressed $1.2 billion National Quantum Initiative that was approved by Congress and the White House last December. Love said Microsofts post-quantum crypto protocols have already gone through an initial round of vetting by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Weve been working at this in a really open way, she said.

Like every technology, quantum computing is sure to have a dark side as well as a bright side. But its reassuring to know that developers are thinking ahead about both sides.

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Microsofts quantum computing network takes a giant leap ...