Computing the Impossible #TechVision And robotics and edge computing are just the effectively store it. Companies are generating supremacy. The company demonstrated how it beginning. As the field grows, it’s becoming more data than ever, and especially in highly performed a specific calculation on a quantum clear that the human brain is particularly good regulated industries like financial services, are computer and estimated it would take 10,000 at solving certain problem sets (relatively) expected to keep and store that data for long years for a classical computer to perform that 182 quickly. For instance, modeling multidimensional periods of time. Indeed, DNA as a solution to same calculation. Though some critics claimed chemical processes or solving constraint this problem is more than science fiction. In it wasn’t “really” quantum supremacy, or that the satisfaction problems are areas where brain- 2019, Microsoft became the first company to problem set was too niche for that declaration to inspired algorithms can provide a distinct demonstrate the ability to successfully store and be made, these objections are beside the point. computational advantage. These advantages 181 Ten years ago, the premise of having a finding retrieve data in fabricated DNA. could be leveraged for use in waste or carbon like this to even debate would have been met recapture or for hyper-personalization, which The Quantum Era with incredulity. many view as potential billion-dollar businesses on the horizon. HPC and bio-inspired compute won’t be the only There’s still a long way to go in quantum tools post-digital businesses need to execute research. For instance, the number of qubits At the same time, we are beginning to see the on their future ambitions, however. While they needed on a machine to break cybersecurity is real fusion between biology and machines – are immensely powerful, HPC machines are expected to be around several thousand, while where machines don’t just mimic biological still “just” classical computers, and bio-inspired today’s devices built by Google and IBM, for 183 operations, but directly leverage biological compute is “just” a new approach to similar instance, host around one hundred. And there processes. At the forefront of this space is problems. The single biggest watershed is a large amount of both theory and practical 179 data storage. One estimate predicts DNA moment for computing will be when quantum development that needs to go into error could store an exabyte of data in just one cubic computers solve the problems that were correcting for quantum machines to reliably centimeter of space, with the potential to persist considered quite literally intractable – making the scale. But for enterprise purposes, the question over 700,000 years based on biological DNA impossible possible. isn’t have we reached quantum supremacy, it’s 180 found on earth. The reliability along with the what can quantum do for me? And the answer economical use of space and energy could be In 2019, Google published a paper in Nature is: a lot more than you’d expect. transformative at a time when our penchant for magazine revealing that it had reached quantum creating data is rapidly outpacing our ability to Introduction // WebMe // Programmable World // The Unreal // Computing the Impossible 81