Integrated circuits form the basis of modern \u2018classical\u2019 computing. There can be hundreds of these microchips in a laptop or personal computer. Their size has meant that now mobile phones have computing power thousands of times faster than the most powerful supercomputers built in the 1980s. Since the 1990s, supercomputers have come into their own. The most powerful supercomputer in the world, Frontier based in the US, has a million times more computing power than top-tier gaming PCs. But these devices are still based on the classical technology of integrated circuits and are therefore limited in their capabilities. Quantum computers promise to be able to process calculations thousands, even millions of times faster than modern computers. We\u2019re not there yet, though. Quantum computers have been in development for decades. These devices use the principles of quantum mechanics \u2013 which produce bizarre and seemingly magical effects \u2013 for machines which can do things that aren\u2019t possible using modern classical computers.<\/p>\n