All computers run on binary. This has been a fact of the matter since the dawn of mechanical computers in the 1800’s (Yes, 1800’s. Despite popular belief computers were first mechanical. Actually you can go back further if you want to get technical, but we won’t do that) and held true when electronic (see useful) computers arrived on the scene in the 1950’s and 60’s.
So before we begin our conversation, it might be kind of nice to know what binary is and what the problem is with it.
The Limits of One and Zero
Binary is 1’s and 0’s. That’s it. Everything in your computer from the sound you hear to the things happening on screen, every input and output, can essentially be reduced to many, many groups of 1’s and 0’s. These 1’s and 0’s are represented by electronic pulses of two different strengths within the machine and are rapidly processed in groups one at a time.
So far, improving computers has meant making processors that are capable of processing those strings of 1’s and 0’s faster and faster. There have been many clever methods of doing this, but the main one has been to make transistors, the logic gates that make/compute the ‘1’s’ and ‘0’s’) within computers, smaller.
There’s a problem with this.
You see, you can only make these transistors so small before you start running into serious issues. In other words, there’s a limit to how small you can make the transistors within modern computers (referred to cutely as classical computers by quantum computer scientists).
The New Age
Computer scientists accepted this over a decade ago and have begun working on ways to surpass the limits of classical computers. Among these methods 3d computing using circuits that work in three dimensions instead of two and quantum computers are the most promising.
The reason quantum computers are probably a bit more exciting at this moment in time is that, while 3d computing is probably more feasible, the promises of quantum computers are far more exciting if actually viable.
Science of the Small
Today’s computers, binary (classical) computers, work on 1’s and 0’s also referred to as bits. A 1 or a 0 is a bit. Quantum computers work on the quantum bit, or qubit. The difference between the two is that in a classical computer each package of information, or bit, can only exist in one state at a time. Therefore, the classical computers can only compute one instruction at a time.
Quantum computers, on the other hand, take advantage of a subatomic phenomenon known as superposition in order to make each qubit able to represent a 1, 0, or a superposition of a 1 and 0. In other words a qubit is not only able to represent a 1 and a 0, but also both at the same time. This third state changes everything and we’ll talk more about it in the next part.
