Quantum computers could break all current encryption.
Foto: Agência Brasil
Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.
Google's new quantum computer has only 53 qubits, requires a multi-million dollar installation, and needs to be kept at -273 degrees Celsius (much colder than interstellar space)! In October, this machine performed in minutes a calculation that would take 10,000 years on the world's fastest supercomputer.
As I explained last week , quantum computers process information in qubits, basic units that take advantage of the strange discoveries of quantum mechanics to perform calculations in a different and dizzyingly fast way. The possibility of building these computers was considered four decades ago. The problem is that qubits are extremely difficult to manufacture and maintain, since they are destroyed by interactions with the environment.
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While engineers haven't yet solved the practical difficulties of building a functional quantum computer, mathematicians have been working to make the project exciting. In 1998, I was a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. The star of the congress was the American Peter Shor, who presented mathematical proof that quantum computers, when they exist, will be able to rapidly factor very large numbers.
This is revolutionary because the main modern methods of cryptography are based on the fact that factoring numbers is a difficult problem for classical computers. In short, whoever has quantum computers will be able to break all current cryptography…
We're still a long way off. The largest number ever factored by a quantum computer using Shor's method was only 21. To have practical use, it needs to be able to do the same for numbers with hundreds of digits. And that will require several thousand qubits. However, just like the precarious flights of aviation pioneers, Google's experiment proves that one day the dream will become reality.
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