Rigetti, a quantum computing start up, is most likely to release a 128-qubit computing system at some point in 2019, a significant improvement in the quantum arena putting the field one step closer to achieving quantum advantage and supremacy.
 
Quantum advantage makes reference to the moment when a quantum computer can calculate hundreds or thousands of times faster than a traditional computer, while quantum supremacy is achieved the moment quantum computers are powerful enough to perform computing that classical supercomputers cannot perform at all. Constructing computing systems with higher qubits is the backbone of how quantum computing will achieve both end goals. The field is shifting dramatically. In 1998, researchers at IBM, Oxford, Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT produced a 2-qubit computing system. By 2018 Google confirmed that it managed to produce a 72-qubit computing system. Rigetti announced it will be going further than that, releasing a 128-qubit system within the year.
 
For the layperson, quantum computing still isn’t a household term. Quantum computing is quite a new technology, first introduced in 1982. The primary variation between the computers and computing systems we interact with daily and quantum computing is the way information is processed on the backend. The average computer relies on a binary system, that means the computer processes information using 0’s and 1’s. A bit is the littlest unit of data in a computer, and all data—the applications that are run, the images that appear—are translated into bits for the computer to understand and process.
 
A qubit takes the idea of a bit of information, which can only exist in one state or another and can only be processed one bit each time and complicates it by making it two-dimensional. Qubits can be processed simultaneously and exist in many states at the same time. That idea is named superposition and it implies that qubits can hold a zero, a one, or any combination of both zero and one at the same time, giving them the potential to be exponentially faster and far better than binary systems.
 
This article is originally posted on TRONSERVE.COM