Quantum computers bring certainty – or do they?
One of the implicit promises made for quantum computing is its certainty – we will be able to solve hugely complex problems in the blink of an eye. As soon as the word 'quantum' is used, the eyes glass over and you disappear into a world in which up appears to be down and, as the song in the Rocky Horror Show goes, 'nothing can ever be the same'. On that basis, you could probably contend the answer to your computing problem could be equally absolutely right and completely wrong.
So it's interesting to see that a joint Spanish/Austrian research team has found the need to develop what it calls error correction code (ECC) for quantum computing.
Despite the implication that quantum computing is definitive, the researchers admit the quantum world is 'fragile and error prone'. "The errors are manifold and harder to correct than in conventional computers," a researcher said.
As with conventional computers, it looks like the world of quantum computing – when it arrives – will be dominated by software issues, but quite what a quantum operating system will look like has yet to be determined. And will quantum computers need a CTRL-ALT-DEL function?
