Although it's too early to talk about the "death hour" of traditional cryptography, it's time to create "skill sets" in quantum computing to be sure that states will have the necessary tools to deal with potential cyber threats at the moment when quantum technologies become viable – and this will happen within five years, according to the technical director of Dell (Chief Technology Officer, CTO) John Roese, writes ZDNet on Tuesday.
The "quantum future" is being brought closer by large IT companies. IBM states about plans to release a quantum computer with 4000 qubits by 2025. This will mean the completion of the experimental stage of work and will allow organizations to buy and use quantum computers. Accordingly, there will be a need for their implementation in companies and in maintenance.
Roes recalls how poorly the technical community was prepared for the advent of cloud computing – there were enough traditional programmers, but specialists who know how to work with cloud architecture were in short supply.
Businesses and universities understand the situation and are trying to prevent this from happening in the case of quantum computing, he notes. The industry should also prepare for the coming "technological shift" so that governments and organizations can fully use quantum computers when they become commercially available.
Quantum technologies differ significantly in programming languages, construction logic, software, and tools, so "techies", including specialists in data processing and analysis, will have to adapt to new conditions and acquire new skills, Roes said.
According to Dell, governments of different countries are already allocating funds – about $ 24 billion – for research and development designed to develop competencies in the field of quantum technologies.
Although asymmetric encryption with a public key remains a reliable method for now, the development of quantum technologies already demonstrates the risks and threats that will arise in the future – data whose protection is reliable today will be defenseless against quantum computing. Protecting personal medical or financial data today, it is necessary to ensure that they are protected 10 years later.
What is quantum computing and quantum communications
A quantum computer uses the binary number system familiar to computers, "inside" it has only zeros and ones. However, the term "qubit" (q-bit, "bit" of a quantum computer) is fundamentally different from a bit: it is impossible to say about the state of a qubit at any given time that it has zero or one inside it. To find out, it is necessary to "remove" the data — open the box with Schrodinger's cat and understand whether the qubit is alive ("1") or dead ("0").
The analogy of "qubit as Schrodinger's cat" can (and should) be replaced by a somewhat more complex (although also primitive) analogy of "qubit as an electron cloud", that is, a sphere at each point of which an electron can be smeared along the orbit. We mentally cut this sphere (like a saw, in half) in order to "catch" an electron in one of the two resulting hemispheres. Practical meaning for the designer of a quantum computer: if an electron is in one hemisphere, it means that the qubit is in the "1" state at the time of information removal, if in the other — "0". Before that, the qubit is in a so-called superposition: both of its possible states are mixed (however, the sum of the probabilities of the states is always equal to 1). As soon as the measurement of the state of the qubit has occurred, everything is over, as in the children's game "Freeze!" Information about the previous "life" of the qubit is destroyed, like a box in which a cat was sitting.
Quantum computing is provided with the ability to fix the relationship of a register (set) of qubits in a superposition. Qubits can be introduced into the so-called entangled (general, unified) state, when measuring one qubit captures not only its state (this state is not determined, recall, by the choice between "0" and "1", the entanglement of the qubit register stores an incomparably richer set of possibilities), but also the state of all qubits in the register. If N qubits in the register are entangled, then a quantum computer can simultaneously process 2 to the power of N bits of data at once.
This gives, firstly, a grandiose increase in the dimension of the processed data: at N=50, the register of entangled qubits is equivalent in terms of the volume of stored data to 10 bits to the 18th power. Secondly, some tasks that are unattainable for classical computers and have the most important application value become available (for example, overcoming the crypto shield).
The function of quantum communications (technologically they are independent in relation to quantum computing, this is a completely different subject area) it consists in providing absolutely secure communications. Unlike quantum computing, quantum communication technologies are already ready for practical application.
