Baby steps toward quantum computing

The idea for quantum computing came in 1981 with presentations by Paul Benioff and Richard Feynman at the First Conference on the Physics of Computation. Fast forward to 1998, when the world’s first quantum computer had only two qubits.

Tip

For more information about the First Conference, the two-qubit computer, and other topics in this Introduction, refer to this chapter's Further reading section. You wouldn’t buy a laptop whose chip could process only two bits. In the same way, you wouldn’t expect a two-qubit quantum computer to solve your puzzling mathematical problems.

By 2006, the world had 12-qubit quantum computers. And by 2017, we had 50-qubit computers. The number of qubits in most advanced quantum computers of the early 2020s is in the low-to-mid hundreds. Compare this with a typical laptop’s memory, which stores about 64 billion bits.

Of course, the answer you get when you ask for a count of...