With the race to build a new generation of computers heating up, European companies are eyeing the game-changing opportunities.
With the race to build a new generation of computers heating up, European companies are eyeing the game-changing opportunities.
At some point in the future, the medicines that people take for everything from a simple cold to a complex disease like Parkinson’s might result from a discovery made using quantum computers.
These machines, which rely on the principles of quantum physics to outperform the fastest classical computers, are widely expected to spur the development of new drugs with the potential for major improvements in health care.New frontier
„Classical computing is facing its limits in a range of fields such as drug discovery,“ said Dr. Cyril Allouche, head of quantum computing at Eviden, a French advance-computing company. „We hope that quantum computing can break this barrier. That would mean new drugs and less disease.“
Welcome to the global race for the next generation of computers—a hunt that Allouche is part of as head of a research project that received EU funding to explore the wide range of possible uses for quantum computing.
While big-name U.S. companies have grabbed headlines by investing billions in a bid to be the first to build a full-sized quantum computer, European businesses and scientists have exhibited the same determination largely out of the spotlight.
For all involved in the quest, deciding whether or not to invest in research now could mean the difference between being on the front line of cutting-edge technologies for health, energy and cybersecurity or lagging behind.Zeroes, ones and more
If the stakes for society are clear, the nature of quantum computing itself is less so.
A normal computer uses a binary code to operate and make calculations. At its core, today’s computing code is nothing more than large amounts of zeroes and ones, with the computer reading either the zero or the one at any single moment.
But in a quantum computer something special occurs: a „superposition“ of the zero and the one. That means the operating system can occupy the two states at the same time.
It is this ability to do two things at once that could drastically speed up the time it takes for computers to perform certain calculations.
But no one is there yet. Existing quantum computers are low-powered machines that offer few advantages over regular computers.What apps?
„Quantum computing, for now, is still theoretical,“ said Allouche.
That is proving no discouragement to researchers, however.
Allouche’s EU-funded project is called NEASQC—an acronym for Next Applications of Quantum Computing. It began in September 2020 and runs until the end of November 2024.
The project has brought together universities in countries such as Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands as well as businesses like pharmaceutical developer AstraZeneca in Sweden, utility Electricité de France, Latvian language-technology company Tilde and U.
