Will quantum computers make the impossible possible?
Most people will have at least seen a headline or two in the news about quantum computing breakthroughs in the last few years. This technology offers the promise of unprecedented computing performance for certain industry-relevant tasks in simulation, machine learning, and optimization.
Today, quantum hardware is still nascent, with significant engineering challenges to overcome before commercial adoption. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, to perform calculations using quantum algorithms, some of which offer an exponential advantage over algorithms on conventional computers. A central challenge is improving the quality of the qubits. At present, quantum computers are limited in the number of operations they can perform without errors accumulating, which greatly limits their utility. Beyond quality, there is also a need to increase scale - the number of qubits that can be used for computing - and the speed of operation also need to be increased to enable the widespread application.
The inception of quantum computing goes back some four decades, so it would be tempting to think of it as a technology always on the horizon. But with today's small-scale quantum computers now available in the cloud for research and commercial evaluation, and with sustained exponential growth in the technology projected over the years ahead, it's easy to see why many think this will be the decade that quantum computing will come of age.
Our ability to use machines to compute has profoundly impacted our lives. It spans everything from the moon landings to present-day AI systems being able to answer our questions almost as convincingly as if they were human, and everything in between. For all that computers touch every aspect of our lives today, we have yet to reach the pinnacle of everything we need computers to do for us. We are not even close. But the coming quantum computing revolution will be felt across all industries. We will focus on a few areas impacting everyone, such as a newfound appreciation of healthcare. We are fortunate that the breakthrough in vaccines and treatments came at the right time and had a real impact. They had been years or even decades of scientific development in the making.
But we have an ageing population and face many diseases for which we do not have cures or even much in the way of effective treatments. The drug discovery process explores vast numbers of potential drug molecules, but this is sometimes not enough to find a promising lead for a new drug. If computers could accurately simulate the impact of novel chemistry on human biology, then - in combination with maturing AI approaches - they could push drug discovery into a new era of finding better therapeutics more quickly at reduced cost. This ability to simulate down to the quantum level is one of the promises of quantum computing, and Capgemini Engineering is currently leading research in collaboration with pharmaceutical industry partners.
Healthcare is not the only pressing issue we face. The need for climate action is immediate, but the journey will be long, and many emerging technologies will play an important role in the years ahead. One of the challenges is feeding a growing population. Fertilizers and modern farming allowed us to achieve four times the crop yields at the start of the last century. But fertilizer is responsible for 3-5% of global natural gas usage*, which translates to around 40% of the carbon footprint of a loaf of bread. Legumes such as peas, beans, and clover help fix nitrogen in the soil without this vast energy cost. We don't understand the natural catalysts which have evolved to make this possible because today's computers cannot simulate them without approximations. However, quantum computing could hold the key to unlocking these secrets and enable us to engineer new processes for sustainable agriculture. It may also impact the design of solar cells and batteries.
* Source: International Energy Agency, Gas2020
The potential impact of quantum computing spans many more areas, from options pricing in financial services to simulation in the automotive and aerospace industries. Whether it be pricing new financial products and managing risk or developing a new generation of materials that we cannot simulate today, one day, the technology will become routine. Ultimately, quantum computing will not just be about being faster or more accurate, but about making the impossible possible.