Quantum Computing Fundamentals

Welcome to "Quantum Computing Fundamentals", where we break down the core concepts of this ground-breaking technology. Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionise problem-solving. But how does it work, and why does it matter? Join us as we explore the principles, challenges, and future of quantum computing in an easy-to-understand way.

I'm Idris Fabiyi, Head of Technology and Innovation at BPP University, Estio Training, Firebrand Training & host of the TechSphere podcast. I'm on a mission to demystify complex technology and make it accessible for businesses and learners.

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Get in Touch: idrisfabiyi@bpp.com

Transcript

Nina: 0:00

You are listening to a BPP School of Technology podcast. Welcome to another episode

Idris Fabiyi: 0:40

So my name's Idris. I work across School of Technology and STO training. I've been in the computing industry for far too long, not far too long, not long enough. I'm absolute lover of everything technology-wise. I've taught at A level, at level three, computing. I've taught software development for apprenticeships. Yeah, I'm a big lover of everything geek.

Mohamed Warsame: 1:06

Yeah, like Nina introduced, my name is Mo Wasami and I'm the program lead of the BC Data Science within the School of Tech and I've been with BPP teaching across data science and machine learning on various programs and just like Idris, I am also very passionate about computing in general and data applications in particular, very keen to learn more about LLMs and AI and how this new wave of technology innovations like quantum computing can and change the current status quo. So I'm here to discuss this and yeah, it's a pleasure.

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 1:48

I'm Jacob. I'm Jacob Raleigh-Cooper. I've been with Firebrand BPP and Destio now for a total of three years in this iteration and worked various companies before that. I'm in the UK, US, Middle East for all of the fun and absolutely love technology. And yeah, looking forward to diving into quite a complex subject and trying to keep it simple.

Nina: 2:11

So tell me, what is quantum?

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 2:14

My understanding and my love for this is it's a new way of processing information. So we use qubits or quantum bits, however you want to kind of call them, depending on your likeness there, instead of kind of the classical bits of zero and ones and the kind of binary way. So unlike the kind of classical computers or the classical computing look, which processes the information in a sequential way, quantum computing can perform all those calculations multiple of them simultaneously which kind of allows the computer or the quantum computer to solve complex problems we use faster in quotation marks but it should be much faster than than classical

Idris Fabiyi: 2:58

My understanding of quantum computing is, or quantum, I think you asked. My understanding of quantum really is, it's more of the science of things in the quantum world. So in the quantum world, strange things happen. Almost, if you can imagine, it lives by another set of rules. And that's what quantum is to me. The science of the quantum world, of the tiny world. I really like

Nina: 3:25

that. So can you explain the key concepts like qubits I think Jacob you mentioned qubits superposition in more simple terms

Idris Fabiyi: 3:36

because you've posed that question I think it'd be a really good starting point for us to talk about binary I know you asked specifically what's a qubit but I suppose the story starts when you think about the traditional way we use computers or the traditional approach to computing that we use in our everyday lives today and that really has a foundation, a building block, if you like, of something called binary. Binary by suggests that there's two states. And now this building block having two states is in essence how the computer is able to store and recall and use the data that it stores. Okay, that's how it's able to represent it. For example, if you think you have something called a byte, a byte would be 8-bit And using this sequence of on and off sequences, we can represent 256 different characters, for example. Just without getting too complicated into it, what I wanted to just add, what I want us to think about is the idea that we can store data using these bits. And these bits are the fundamental building blocks of binary. And binary is how we traditionally use computers nowadays.

Mohamed Warsame: 4:58

To kind of iterate and reinforce what Idris said, when we teach programming, the very first lesson is that computers and human beings communicate on fundamentally different ways. So for us, it's natural language, but for the computer, it is programming language. And different programming languages have one thing in common. They all try to translate human commands, calculate the sum of these two numbers or store this piece of information in that form. and they convert it into binary, the language that the computers understand. And these are just, like Idris said, zeros and ones, like light switches that give the computer instruction to encode a particular message into numbers and then action those numbers as a set of instructions. So these are zeros and ones, and that's the basic unit of how computers understand information. So that knowledge that a computer is very different from a human being being that everything is in numbers everything is in on or off and you know light switches we can then extend that and think about what would a qubit then be if a bit is just a basic unit of information that can be zero or one and that can be a sequence that can be a byte what would a qubit then be

Nina: 6:18

so i understand bit so what about qubit

Idris Fabiyi: 6:23

a qubit is very similar to the bit in inside of a regular computing scenario. But a qubit, unlike a bit, has more than one state. So just as Mo said, it's only one of two states. But a qubit, however, has multiple states. And I suppose that's what really makes quantum really interesting. When we think about these states that the qubit can be in, the qubit can be either on, off, or both at the same time. Now, that's just one of the strange anomalies of quantum computing. And that's one of the things that allow us to approach computing quite differently.

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 7:03

With superposition meaning that qubits can exist of both zero and one at the same time, which Idris said it is quite strange to have that kind of ability. We also then have entanglement, which is when or where two qubits become kind of linked, so that if you change one, no matter where that other qubit is, however it is linked, that will also be affected by that change. So what that allows with this, instead of standard zero and one of only being in two states, it allows the quantum computer to process an incredible amount of information more efficiently because it can communicate with its thing that it's connected with. So it's a lot faster at responding and handling multiple possibilities and making them more powerful for certain types of calculations. It's a lot more fun.

Idris Fabiyi: 7:58

I just want to add a bit more to what Jacob said there. There's some nuances to that linking together. It doesn't matter how far apart these qubits are. It doesn't matter what materials in between them. Once these qubits are in this state of entanglement, they literally mimic each other at the speed of light. Very, very, very strange.

Mohamed Warsame: 8:23

That is a very strange and wonderful thing, but I think it would also be worthwhile for Nina as well as anyone who is not into this to kind of have some sort of analogy in their minds to sort of visualize this very abstract quantum stuff so one analogy that really helped me was the idea of a spinning coin right heads or tail so in traditional binary something is either zero or one true or false right but with quantum it can be the case that it is both at the same time, right? Which sounds really ludicrous when you think of it. How can something be true and false at the same time? But it is so because of the fact that that qubit exists in a very different realm, right? So it's very different to a bit because it is kind of dynamic. It is moving. It's like a spinning coin. So as the coin spins, it is both heads and tails at the same time. And only when you make it stop spinning, that's when you reveal whether or not it is heads or tail. And likewise, a qubit only sort of shows the information that it contains the moment it collapses. That's the moment when it is asked to kind of reveal the value that it holds, if that makes sense. So you stop the spinning and the value of the qubit is collapsed and then it takes on one or zero.

Nina: 9:52

That definitely makes sense to me now. I am a lot more clearer on that.

Idris Fabiyi: 9:56

That's fantastic. Yeah, that's fantastic. Fantastic explanation. Yes, really good explanation.

Nina: 10:01

Do you feel quantum computing is a game changer and what problems can it solve that classical computers can't?

Mohamed Warsame: 10:11

Yeah, I think it is a massive game changer, but I think from a data science perspective, if you think about the shortcomings of the traditional way of having programming languages convert human instructions into binary code and then your traditional computing system, your binary computing system, performing the calculations everything is like Jacob said earlier, sequential, right? So algorithms work in a sequential way. Step one, take this value A, step two, take the value B, and then step three, multiply them or divide them and then take the result and save that result. So sequential instructions. But if we go back to this wonderful world of qubits where you can have information linger in a state of zero and one, at the same time until it collapses or this idea of entanglement that two qubits are connected in a magical way you realize that things are not sequential anymore so that information passes very quickly there's the speed element of it so it's exponentially faster than traditional computing but there's also this element of the complexity so calculations can be performed instantaneously So information is processed much faster. Problems that are increasingly complex can be solved instantaneously. And it's just a very, very different way of doing things. It's also quite hard to kind of fathom how that works. But we're moving from a world where things happen slowly and sequentially into a world where things happen at the same time instantaneously.

Nina: 11:59

Do you think in the long run this is going to impact the way we use artificial intelligence, for example?

Idris Fabiyi: 12:07

Quantum computing can revolutionize virtually every one of our sciences, every one of our fields, and there's so much potential to harness. Like Mo was saying, just as you were talking about the shortcomings of the classical computers, I think it's also worth pointing the highlights of the classical computers. The highlights really are the strength and also the weakness of quantum computing. The highlights of classical computing at this stage is when the data becomes corrupt in our classical computing sense. We have mechanisms and algorithms here to save the day. In layman's terms, let me just repeat that again. When data becomes corrupt or when transferring data, don't forget this data traditionally stored in ones and zeros in sequences. So if these sequences become disrupted or they become broken or misinterpreted from the sender to the receiver. We have ways of correcting our data and we can use data in our traditional sense with a lot more predictability. Now that therein lies the problem with quantum. Quantum is flawed in the sense that it has a lot of errors and the situation we find ourselves in is managing these errors and I suppose minimizing the errors that we get from quantum computing. So before we can truly harness quantum computing for things like applications like AI, we do need to solve quite a few issues. Now those issues are getting closer and closer, but we're still quite far away. Do we feel we're at a point yet where we can harness the power of quantum effectively for a field like AI?

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 14:01

think so at the moment the implications of using it mainstream it's quite hard at the moment and we'll get onto it a little bit later on now as you mentioned Idris there about the error correction and things like it is very fragile I think it's a nice word to use for it but you also have to maintain an incredibly low temperature don't you so there's a lot of storage issues I'm just thinking mainstream the actual energy costs and things are a time where money could be better spent elsewhere. It all depends on your way, doesn't it? A way of thinking about the future.

Nina: 14:39

So Jacob, if we were to apply this and obviously this is where I'm coming in from a novice, we're kind of like testing this on real world applications such as healthcare, finance. That's kind of scary to know that it's still in its infancy stage and there are still errors being made. What's your kind of thought on whether we're testing it in the right way?

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 15:07

What a fun question. I don't think there's a perfect answer for this at the moment. I think when you look at security concerns as an example, Quantum computers could, and obviously put it in quotation marks, they could break a lot of encryption methods that we use. I was thinking about RSA as an example, which a lot of our communication and a lot of our online banking as an example use at the moment. But that has pushed people on to have a look at, I think is it called post-quantum, like cryptography and things, both you and Mo and Idris, that is kind of aiming towards how do we create encryption encryptions that quantum computing can't break so i think we're already thinking way past the implementation of it at the moment i think it may be a bit of a fear factor of it's going to be incredibly powerful so now we need to think about how to look at or protect ourselves from it later down the line but it is or it should be used for in the future going forward like highly specialized problems so you're looking at cryptography of course and then simulations if you want to look at incredibly complex simulations they can do it incredibly quickly where it would take a classical computer years to do the same thing. It's just you'd have to do a lot of error checking for that and testing isn't fully there yet. So I think it's got quite a bit of way to go.

Mohamed Warsame: 16:34

Yeah, and I second what you just said, Jacob. I think a lot of the fear factor around encryption is going to, in the short and medium term, make a lot of companies, especially in banking like JPMorgan Chase and other organisations focus on making systems quantum safe and you know I think that will precede the integration of quantum systems into AI because like you said cooling being a very big problem and the fact that these systems are prohibitively expensive so there's a general trend to doing things in a more clever way as opposed to trying to leverage computing power to improve AI models and and their abilities. So the general trend is trying to reduce the costs, not increase them. And because quantum computing is so expensive to get the hardware fit with the software, the cooling around it, it currently costs several hundred millions of pounds to get just these quantum computers to perform some basic optimization tasks. So I think we are a little at the very minimum 10 plus years away from having AI integrated quantum systems.

Idris Fabiyi: 17:54

Yeah, just listening to both Mo and Jacob, could you just elaborate a little on what we mean by encryption?

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 18:04

So encryption is a method of converting information into, let's call it a secret code of some kind to protect it from people who shouldn't be accessing it really. When we think about our passwords, when we log into a system, a good system currently won't store your password onto a database as it is. It will convert it or hash it, convert it into something else. So it is secure. And then when you go into login again, it will compare its conversion to what was stored originally and see if they match so if I had a password of password123 the thing that will be stored in the database won't be password123 it will be something that the program or the software has converted into something else and then that is what's checked so when we mentioned before about something like RSA encryption for online banking and things if a quantum computer can break that encryption which means it can find the key for that encryption so simply if we went from ABC and that then became BCD for example so it just simply moved one to the right it can quickly find that and in seconds you know and compared to a classical computer so no matter the technical difficulty of that encryption if a quantum computer can brute force which means just keep going and going and going then it is a slight worry. And I say slight again in quotation marks, but it depends on how involved you are in that, that it could be a bigger worry there.

Mohamed Warsame: 19:44

Yeah. And just because, again, to reinforce superposition, because these qubits exist in multiple states at the same time, because they can have a more complex representation, they can try out many more combinations of data and information a lot faster than traditional bits. So it is It's just a superior way of transmitting information. And just like Jacob said, it would, within seconds, try out many, many different combinations and brute force break encryption. And that's one of the biggest worries at the moment.

Nina: 20:19

So in terms of if somebody was looking at going into this field, were really interested in it, what foundational skills or knowledge should they focus on before they kind of got started with this?

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 20:34

So I think with that one, to not scare anyone off, because obviously you can go into the details of, you know, you want to look at linear algebra and things like that and quantum mechanics. You can dive into that all day. You know, if you're struggling to sleep at 11 o'clock at night, just grab a book and read about quantum mechanics. But programming, that's all with Python and what Mo has said about using it inside of data as well. Python is a really important tool in this, like using it with libraries like Circle or key skit however you want to pronounce it is really really useful and understanding classical computers is really important too because you need to know how it used to be done you can't just think about how it's going to be done with a quantum computer you need to understand why we're looking at things like quantum computing what's the benefits of it and what are the drawbacks to dive into that topic

Mohamed Warsame: 21:32

great yeah and just a second what Jacob was saying there's also IBM's quantum experience platform so and and they've got a lot of resources for beginners and sort of hands-on learning tools that enable sort of complete novices to try to yeah get their practical hands-on experience with it

Nina: 21:51

so it looks like it's coming it's growing and do you think the big players are already secretly working on something behind the scenes

Idris Fabiyi: 21:59

don't know how much you've heard about Google's willow chip I know Microsoft that released their new Quantum. They brand it as Quantum, but what's really happening is they're experimenting. It's still very much a research endeavor. Microsoft have just released a CPU. The

Mohamed Warsame: 22:19

Majorana

Idris Fabiyi: 22:19

One. Yeah, the Majorana One. There you go. I think you said it definitely a lot better than I would have done. So that's the Majorana One, and that's a Quantum CPU from Microsoft who are traditionally developers of CPUs, but yes, like I said, it feels more like a research endeavor. It's not full-blown quantum computing, but they are definitely making some waves and trying out new topological approaches to quantum CPU manufacture. And Google, who I feel are probably today, to date, the furthest ahead, they've also used the topological approach to quantum development. And they have a CPU called the Willow. which is apparently meant to be really, really powerful. But yes, I'm not too sure how much these CPUs are widespread and out there, but the big tech companies do like to, every once in a while, flex their research prowess.

Nina: 23:20

So can each of you give me an example of what you think the future of quantum computing is going to look like?

Mohamed Warsame: 23:29

I think from a data science perspective, quantum computing will not replace the way we do things now. I think there will coexist and try to complement as opposed to completely displacing everything we do. I think that would just not be feasible from a cost and technical perspective. So it's going to be a gradual, they come hand in hand, they come together. Quantum computing will coexist with classical computing. And so, yeah, it won't be sort of an overnight overhaul like it was with LLMs and the likes of ChachiPT.

Jacob Reilly-Cooper: 24:07

yeah i think on that i just that last bit mo that people will expect new technology revelations and things to happen just as quickly as the kind of gen ai bumping on to the scene you know as it did at the end of 2024 but i think from the software kind of standpoint so yeah of course there'll be new programming models like loads of fun phrases like quantum algorithms will pop out of there but we'll i think the immediate well i'll say immediate in the next few years outlook will be kind of a hybrid computing system that you can look at so that kind of combine the classical and quantum computing but there's a heck of a lot of learning go for that i don't think you'll see like quantum engineers you know a standard software company just yet because there's a lot more kind of to go with that but it won't replace classical software development i think and i'm using classical there because obviously that's what we've called the original classical computing side but they'll create new opportunities in those fields so insider data like Mo said insider cyber security data science cloud computing just like that just using one as an example like Amazon have their own quantum computing service for people to use called bracket which as you made it mainstream of not a lot of people picking it up just yet but it's out there like the technology is out there to learn and pick up it so you have more expensive cost currently because it's not widespread but it's going to be really interesting to see where it goes over the next couple of years

Idris Fabiyi: 25:45

yeah i'm i'm really at a loss to think what a world with fully integrated quantum computing looks like and i and i see myself as a technological visionary but it is just a wide wild vast anything because um to further answer your question quantum can really really affect and re-revolutionize things like our sciences, the way we produce medicine. It's got potential to revolutionize so many different industries. I don't even know how to imagine what a world with fully integrated quantum could look like.

Nina: 26:25

Well, on that note, like to continue this conversation because I can see it definitely evolving over time and it'll be great to have you all back to kind of look at how this has evolved over time and what's coming and who knows we might have some budding quantum engineers of the future coming out and we may even be designing a program on it so who knows but thank you so much for your time been a pleasure having you and I look forward to definitely continuing this conversation soon.