Britain is leading the charge in the ominous computers of the future

By Frank Wolfreys

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On the ground floor of computing giant IBM’s offices in Waterloo, the company who created but failed to patent the classic computer has a model of a quantum computer displayed – it’s second stab at global technological domination. Eyes goggling it through the thick glass would be forgiven, though, for thinking that ‘the future’ looks remarkably similar to the past.

Despite the Tardis-like nature of this hardware, however, its promise has attracted investment from the government who are keen to position themselves at the centre of what could be revolutionary change.

Rachel Reeves delivering her second Mais lecture to a group of experts and journalists at Bayes Business School, Credit: Frank Wolfreys

Earlier this March, the UK’s Chancellor delivered her Mais lecture to set out her economic vision to business players and thinkers. In it, she pledged £1 billion to support the development of the first quantum computers. In doing so, she positioned Britain’s quantum success as a key part of her economic vision for the future.

Even the most exuberant of quantum optimists, though, admits that any such active application or use of a quantum computer is most likely a decade away.

In what is a deeply theoretical field, quantum professors are propelled by imagining how quantum computing can solve the world’s problems.

One example of these is Winfried Hensinger, a leading quantum professor at the University of Sussex. He explains that the rapidity which quantum computers can target significant problems – such as finding the chemical makeup of a vaccination – spurs him on.

(Winfried Hensinger with his colleague with the trapped-ion quantum machine capable of measuring electric fields with unparalleled accuracy, Source: University of Sussex)

“There would be nothing cooler than when I’m dead and on my grave, and, it says, this man has helped to accelerate the creation of this drug that really helped these people who would otherwise have died,” he said.

But how much of the quantum computing or ‘QC’ industry is based on these kind of visions and hypotheses? Given the development phase QCs are in, the answer appears to be, inevitably, a significant chunk.

QCs are made from quantum chips which require qubits – a very precise combination of alloys made through a lithographic process. The subsequent firing of the machine requires incredibly isolated conditions, which involves getting a small area down to the coldest possible temperature.

For a quantum computer to solve a particular problem, a unique algorithm has to be found for that problem, a situation which makes progress slow and has led previous enthusiasts to leave the profession.

Dr Mithuna Yoganathan studied Quantum Computing at the University of Cambridge. She left it however, and now runs a Youtube channel which aims to cut through what she terms as the “hype” of the technology. 

As a former insider, she believes that the progress made by academics and researchers to locate these golden algorithms in the past few years has been “very slow.”

Hensinger admits that the process can often be messy and that expensive mistakes do indeed occur.

“Quantum computing has truly groundbreaking applications, but, it’s very important to understand that it will take time. There is no trickery or magic with these things”

Hensinger has an effusive optimism and says that, when people tell him something is impossible, it makes him want to try it doubly.

And despite the scientist’s bias, there is ample evidence to suggest that Britain has an enviable position over other nations, which suggest it stands to benefit from any of the fruits of quantum computing in the coming years.

At the University of Sussex, for example, a vacuum technology was created last year which made Britain one of only three other countries with the technology.

The vacuum creates a protected space which allows the highly sensitive particles to conduct much more efficiently without the more elaborate temperature reduction procedures of the past.

What Reeves termed in her Mais lecture as Britain’s “Silicon Valley” between Oxford and Cambridge has shown signs of competitive successes.

And Hensinger ‘s fierce competitivity with his rival quantum research department at Oxford is ample evidence of this:

“We didn’t get funding for that, like all the funding went to our competitors in Oxford and and so be like, you know, and we just found money in all sorts of funny places fit this on a shoestring budget and and a few years later, we beat Oxford by an order of magnitude and speed of one million.”

Britain’s theoretical success has made it into commercial success too. Quantinuum is a world leading British company which has one of the most advanced trapped ion systems.

But, as well as the possibilities to cure disease and solve the energy efficiency problems of the future which the world is set to face with climate change, the discussions about the damage a working QC could do is also a hot topic.

Last week, Google wrote a blogpost warning that: “The encryption currently used to keep your information confidential and secure could easily be broken by a large-scale quantum computer in coming years.” This very real possibility that a sufficiently powerful QC could break the encryption on virtually all classical computers, meaning all online data – including credit card details, addresses and passwords – would be corrupted has been dubbed “Q-Day”.

IBM’s decommissioned early quantum model displayed in the ground floor of its office in Waterloo Credit: IBM

With the realisations of QCs to be determined, it is those like Hensinger, who are trying hard to make the theoretical into the practical by pursuing the impossible, who will decide whether it will happen. And, inevitably, the actual practicalities of solving what has been created from this are invariably relegated, perhaps dangerously, to tomorrow’s problem.

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