Get Into the Quantum Game: Use Cases Are Emerging

No one has achieved true quantum advantage, where a quantum computer can best a classical computer at a task, considering all relevant factors such as speed and accuracy. Proving quantum advantage to the satisfaction of the scientific community requires benchmarking an application against all known classical computing methods — a difficult task. However, some end-user companies are claiming “customer advantage” with quantum computing — meaning they’ve considered several leading options and found that a quantum approach provides some advantage, considering such aspects as price and speed.

We don’t know exactly when true quantum advantage will be reached; however, some use cases in optimisation could get there within a year. But the key point is that when the advantage is achieved by one or more industry players and new use cases fundamentally disrupt manufacturing, logistics and finance, companies that are not quantum-ready won’t be able to simply flip a switch and get into the quantum computing game.

Bottom line, this journey is about readiness, for quantum computing can disrupt and destroy.

It’s difficult to draw analogies to where we are in the quantum computing timeline. Is it the early 1990s of the internet? Uses dreamed of at that time didn’t even begin to capture what the internet would lead to. The same is true for quantum use cases; we know they are just the beginning of applications for systems with infinite possibilities. With quantum, we have the potential for infinite computing power.

One of the most promising use cases gains its edge from a rapidly maturing technology. Optimisation problems are performed on quantum annealers, which map variables to thousands of qubits in a way that can be thought of as a field of peaks and valleys. The computer finds the lowest energy state to give the best possible answer.

One way to visualise this process is to imagine searching for the lowest valley on a continent. With a “classical” approach, you would have to drive up and down all over the terrain to measure and find the answer. Thanks to quantum tunneling, the annealer can quickly identify the answer by moving through all the hills without a slow road-trip approach. These “peaks and valleys” can be applied to things like asset portfolios to solve for optimal returns. Specific constraints can be assigned, such as how long to hold an asset and the minimum gain before selling.

There are also gate-based quantum computers that address other kinds of use cases. In a gate-based system, quantum logic gates are applied to qubits until a precise answer is obtained from an algorithm. Unlike annealing, which is looking for a good-enough low-energy state, gate-based machines solve for specific answers to questions.