Today, even the massive amount of processing power generated by computer manufacturers has not yet been able to quench our thirst for speed and computing capacity.

Although progress in VLSI technology has reduced the size of chips immensely and thus contributed a lot in making more powerful and high speed processors, conventional technologies have their limitations. Conventional processors use transistors for computing, which cannot be made smaller after an extent because then Quantum effects will come into play leading to erroneous results.

In 1982, Nobel prize winner physicist Richard Feynman coined the idea of  a “Quantum computer“, which could use the effect of quantum mechanics to its advantage. Unlike conventional computers in which a bit can only be in 0 or 1 state, a quantum bit(qubit) can exist in both states simultaneously.

This is because at quantum level every object is a group of superimposed waves, hence a qubit can exist in parallel universe in a different state, thus allowing us to perform operation on two different values in a single operation.

This state is called coherent superposition. Although it seems quite fascinating, this is equally tedious task to perform. WHY?

Because when quantum level particles interact with our physical world they tend to go in de-coherent state and thus all the advantage of using them vanished. Even the slightest noise can force the particle to make a transition from a coherent state to de-coherent state.

This is known as “Quantum Bug“.

But, now the world has witnessed breakthrough in quantum computing. Assistant Prof. Susumu and his team from USC Dornsife College managed to suppress decoherence which was the leading roadblock in the path of quantum computing.

The research  appeared in the online version of Nature magazine on June 20.

There is still a long path to be covered to reach the goal but yes this is a long leap towards it.

The future with super-processors is still distant yet it’s a thrill feeling, imagining to live in a “Quantum Bug” free world.