Integrated circuits form the basis of modern ‘classical’ 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’re not there yet, though. Quantum computers have been in development for decades. These devices use the principles of quantum mechanics – which produce bizarre and seemingly magical effects – for machines which can do things that aren’t possible using modern classical computers.
Full opinion : The promise of a quantum computing revolution.