Lecturer and researcher in the field of cyber security, cryptography and cloud computing at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia (UI) Dr. Amril Syalim said that quantum computing is useful to support the calculation process much faster than an ordinary computer.
“Quantum computing is a way of doing computation by utilizing phenomena in physics called superposition and entanglement which have an impact on the calculation process that is much faster than ordinary computers for certain problems such as the problem of finding keys in cryptography, simulating the physical world. and machine learning,” said Amril Syalim when contacted by ANTARA, Jakarta, Wednesday.
Amril, who is also Head of the Undergraduate Study Program in Computer Science at the University of Indonesia, said that quantum computing, which is implemented with a quantum computer, is useful for assisting computing processes, including in the economic sector.
However, quantum computers will not be used to replace the computers currently used, because not all computational problems can be calculated by a quantum computer faster than an ordinary computer.
“So later in its implementation, quantum computers will complement the computers we use today and be used for these specific problems,” he said.
For example, quantum computers can be used to improve and speed up computations such as weather simulations, encryption decoding, and machine learning processes. However, for office work such as Microsoft Word, Excel, even web applications, mobile applications will still use an ordinary computer.
On a small scale, quantum computers have been proven to be implementable.
However, for large scales to be able to calculate with large amounts of data, there are still many problems that need to be solved so that for now there is no quantum computer that can be used to solve problems on a large scale in the real world.
However, progress has always been made in the field of implementing quantum computers in the future, so mastery of the technology cannot be ruled out.
“So from now on, our country should start getting ready to master this quantum computer technology so that it is not left behind by other countries,” said Amril.
Quantum computers are different from ordinary computers. A typical computer has a processor built using electronic equipment such as ICs or integrated circuits that can perform mathematical calculations such as addition, multiplication and logic. So, the operations that can be performed actually also come from mathematical operations.
To simulate the real world on an ordinary computer, it is necessary to create models or mathematical equations from the real world.
While on a quantum computer, the calculation process is carried out by carrying out a physics experiment and to get the results, it is necessary to carry out measurements in the experiment. So that quantum computers can better simulate the real world because the method of calculation is direct by conducting experiments in the real world.
Quantum computers have the following advantages
for some special problems it can calculate much faster because of the superposition effect it has so that the calculations can run in parallel.
Quantum computers are also better at simulating the real world because they make direct use of physical phenomena. For example, choosing a random sample by rolling a dice cannot be perfectly simulated by an ordinary computer, but a quantum computer can.
On the other hand, quantum computers have drawbacks, namely the implementation of quantum computers is very difficult, because to implement a quantum computer, you have to carry out physics experiments at the quantum level where during the computation process, operators (humans) cannot interfere with the process.
“So the calculation results can only be obtained once at the end,” said Amril.
Amril said that every time he did a calculation, an error would occur which had to be corrected so that the results matched, and that was not easy to do and is still being investigated today.
This article was first published on ANTARA (3 February 2021).
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