I read the full article (I don’t do that often!) and you sound correct in your assumptions.
It would be great if they used it in an example.
We have incredible speeds for sending information as it is.
How much faster is needed and what’s the upside?
I know this whole quantum computer thing will make it capable for a single code to be a 0 or a 1, and I don’t know how that works and what it means either :)
I know how codes are built. I just don’t understand how 0 and 1 could occupy the same space in the code.
It hasn’t been 0 or 1 since the 70’s.
Even 360 modulation is out. Think 5G
Quantum computing is really a mathematical reality awaiting the discovery of a theoretical physical medium.
What I mean by “physical medium” is the silicone chips. Their discovery allowed the high speed binary computing we have today because of a natural property silicone has: it has a crystalline grid structure on a microscopic level which allows it to be assigned with millions of finite addresses whose electrons can be switched on and off.
The crystalline address structure is so regular and fixed that huge amounts of on/off values (binary data) can be stored and accessed repeatedly with predictable results. It is the microscopic scale of these grids that allows the high speed processing we have today.
To make it any faster, you would either need a structure that is smaller, or a higher order than binary.
Binary computing (on/off) is a mathematical limitation. Quantum computing is simply mathematics not limited to binary. Theoretically, there is no reason math should be limited to binary - a base 2 system is slow and cumbersome compared to a base 3, base 4, etc.
The only thing limiting us to base 2 computing is the properties of silicone which only allow the addresses to have two states; “on” or “off”.
As soon as some microscopic crystalline structure is discovered or synthesized whose addresses can be switched to more states than “on” or “off”, we will have quantum computing.
The math is already there. We are just waiting for a physical medium that can store data beyond the limitations of binary.
If you can think of something that will do that, then you will be rich and famous.
I’m going to try Parmesan cheese - wish me luck.