The cloud has already being tagged as one of the most disruptive technologies of modern times by many tech experts; the cloud has also remained true to its tag by enabling millions of people to access advanced technologies through internet. The cloud has never stopped developing new capabilities to make it more accessible, more efficient, and cheaper for people.
IBM has recently announced that they will offer quantum computing on its Cloud Platform. IBM’s focus on quantum computing will make way for something much bigger in time to come; in other words, it will mark the beginning of the new era for cloud computing.
The Brand New Era of Computing
Quantum computers function on their unique principles, which are quite different from standard computing principles. The set takes near about a room’s space, which is an atypical scenario at any typical corporate office. Quantum computers operate on two prime principles of entanglement and super positioning. The principle of Super positioning enables quantum bits to exist in the state of zero, one, and both zero and one. The principle of Entanglement creates linkage between those states, which in turn radically changes the computation mathematics.
No More Bottleneck Problems and Moore’s Law
Quantum computing, undoubtedly, functions on superior capabilities as compared to standard computers. Looking at the history of past 50 years, the capabilities and power of computers have doubled every 18 months on average, popularly known as Moore’s Law. This reflects the pace of advancements in our machines.
Tech experts from leading corporate giants such as IBM are putting their energy on developing new schemes such as 3D stacking, silicon photonics, and neuromorphic computing. Silicon photonics aims at accelerating the speed of communication between chips, while3D stacking aims at minimizing the distance between chips. Neuromorphic computing aims at discarding the bottlenecks associated with chips.
Welcoming New Frontiers
IBM has invested many years for the development of futuristic quantum computing technology. IBM lab has also achieved their first quantum entanglement in 1993.IBM has achieved many milestones in quantum computing technologies in recent years that can enable them to commercialize usage of quantum computers; one of such achievements is successful arrangement of qubits in a lattice.
Today one can only speculate things that quantum computers can do, and ways in which it can change the functionality of cloud computing. However, as per many tech experts, the quantum technology will excel at simulations functioning at massive scale such as those used in agent-based models and pharmaceutical research. It also suits aptly to applications operating with a heavy computational component, just like cryptography.
An Ultra-modern Era for Cloud Computing
To predict the future of quantum computing technology and its impact on the cloud is quite challenging. We are currently living in a unique computing paradigm; if one scales up our present computers, they transform into servers, and if one scales them down, they become smartphones. Such a level of scaling ensures that in future, the chances are high for people to pick different architectures for different day to day tasks. For instance, an organization may use a quantum computer for running a simulation test (agent based) targeting 100 million customers, and then using its neuromorphic technology for analyzing results and forming a report. Then the organization may also send the analyzed report using unbreakable quantum encryption for privacy concerns.
The complete quantum computing system may not fit on a desk or may even take more space than an office room. The system will eventually become an essential part of people’s day to day work, and organizations without the access of its capabilities will find it challenging to achieve competitive advantage. This is the reason why the announcement made by IBM holds the key for the futuristic era for cloud computing. Until now, people were using the cloud technology, at lower cost, to access modern capabilities; however, with quantum computing on the table, anyone can access its capabilities that were impossible to access before. This is truly something new, unique, and innovative.
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