Since the concept of quantum computing came about in the late 20th century, many people have deemed it to be the next step in the world of technology. However, due to the difficult to handle nature of the work it is proving harder and harder to make useful breakthroughs. For those of you who are unfamiliar, quantum computing is a method of computing where the memory of the computer is stored and understood within the principle of superposition. This means that rather than the 0 or 1 binary of conventional computing, quantum computers can understand information of a spectrum. This may sound promising, however, there is a large issue with the quantum machines of today.
The current state of the quantum computing is one of hope, waning. So far each computer can only operate within certain environmental standards, if any fluctuation occurs then the results are thrown off. This is understood by the scientific community at large, but it means that a majority of the processing power goes towards correcting for error. While attempts are being made to increase the efficiency of these, it remains distinctly possible that at the current rate of improvement classical computers will always be superior. This was shown in 2016 when researchers developed a quantum method to “draw inferences from large data sets” that was faster than conventional computing, only for an undergraduate student to develop an even faster new conventional method in 2018. These factors make quantum computing an unsure field at best, but there are still some reasonable claims that should be explored.
Despite all of the reasons why quantum computing is currently behind classical computing, there still exist areas where innovation can make it useful. Quantum computing is based on guesses that are refined to be correct, and while this mechanism can be used for all applications of standard computers there are some applications for which it fares much better. This has caused one of the most useful innovations in computation, hybrid computing. In this model the quantum computer would be used only for the classically difficult part of the calculation where its results would then allow a traditional computer to complete it. This allows for maximum efficiency as the computer best suited for parts of a job complete only their own assignment, it is the thing that progressed human society so far (job specialization) utilized to solve a problem. Another useful advancement made was that of error mitigation, which is slightly less wasteful than the traditional method of quantum computing. Normally, quantum computers calculate an answer and then correct said error, error mitigation essentially calculates multiple answers and compares them to find the correct sum of their information. This has been tested for known simulations and yielded results that were almost an exact match to the known values. Given these positives, quantum computing has the capability to be an important step in human innovation.
There are both positives to and negatives to researching quantum computing; strides are being made in the field, but the systems themselves are not yet more useful than traditional computers. Hopefully, research will continue to be done as this is a fascinating field with the potential to have promising results for the scientific community at large.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-quantum-supremacy-the-hunt-for-useful-quantum-computers/