Some experts believe that its trading advantages will arrive much sooner than expected.
Tech stocks are one of the big winners of the year. The ‘boom’ of artificial intelligence (AI) has breathed life into the sector after a disastrous 2022 in the markets. Rivers of ink have flowed about the exciting advances of this technology, especially generative AI, and its ability to change our production models and economies, among many other things.
However, there is one technological breakthrough that is slipping under the radar that some experts believe could be the defining technology of this decade: Quantum Computing. “Forget AI: quantum computing is the next big revolution,” said Martha Lane Fox, president of the British Chamber of Commerce.
Citi experts point out that all of the technological advances seen so far have been facilitated and produced by increased computing speeds that allow for faster computations, as well as better connectivity, but they have all been based on existing computing technology. “But that’s about to change. The next phase of computing—quantum computing—is about to move from theoretical to practical, and we’re fast approaching a point where quantum computers will be able to perform tasks faster, more efficiently and cheaply than classical computers”, they highlight.
“Quantum computing breaks away from traditional classical computing by using quantum mechanics as its foundation. If you passed physics classes in high school or college, you may remember quantum mechanics as a daunting concept associated with geniuses like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Max Planck. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to start thinking about how quantum computing can revolutionize industry and society,” they explain.
From Citi they believe that this technology “will radically change the way of doing things” and that the commercial advantages for companies “will arrive sooner than many expect.” “And given the speed at which quantum computing is advancing, we believe that now is the time for States, companies and market agents to start preparing for its arrival”, they conclude.
What is Quantum Computing?
Quantum Computing is a rapidly expanding emerging technology that uses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical systems. It is a computing paradigm different from the traditional one and based on the use of quantum bits (qubit or qubit), a special combination of ones and zeros. Bits in classical computing can be either 1 or 0, but only one state at a time, while the qubit can have both states simultaneously.
“Each of the last three decades has had its own computing revolution: the personal desktop revolution of the 1990s, the mobile revolution of the 2000s, and the cloud computing revolution of the 2010s. Though each has changed gradually the way we interact with computers, none has made us fundamentally rethink what it really means to ‘compute.’ Quantum computing can do exactly that,” they detail from Citi.
The New York firm’s experts believe that the growth rate of computing power is reaching its physical limit. As they have pointed it out, some industry observers have indicated that Moore’s Law, the principle that expresses the doubling of transistors per chip every 18 or 24 months, has been threatened in the last decade, and the rate of advancement of the current paradigm is expected of “classical” computing will decrease in the coming years.
By Audy Castaneda
