NATIONAL MISSION ON QUANTUM COMPUTING TECHNOLOGIES

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Union Budget for 2020-21, presented on February 1, 2020, proposed Rs 8,000 crore over five years for National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications.

What are Quantum Technologies?

Quantum technologies comprise quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum optics, quantum information processing, quantum internet and quantum artificial intelligence.

Need for special attention:

• The interest and excitement about quantum computer is because of its power to dabble with complex calculations involved in fields like cyber-security which digital computers now deal with.
• Quantum communications can enhance (cyber) security, provide unique fingerprints and also increase available bandwidth for internet networks.

What is a quantum computer?

• Quantum computers work by harnessing the properties of quantum mechanics.
• Quantum computers use logical units called quantum bits, or qubits for short, that can be put into a quantum state where they can simultaneously represent both 0 and 1.

Difference between classical and quantum computers?

• Classical computers process information in a binary format, called bits, which can represent either a 0 or 1.
• While the bits in a classical computer all operate independently from one another, in a quantum computer, the status of one qubit effects the status of all the other qubits in the system, so they can all work together to achieve a solution.

How the result is obtained?

While a conventional computer outputs the same answer to a problem every time you run a calculation, the outputs of a quantum computer are probabilistic. That means it does not always produce the same answer. So to use a quantum computer, you have to run a calculation through the system thousands or even millions of times, and the array of outputs converge around the answer that is most likely to be correct.