Technology companies are pouring billions of dollars into quantum computing, despite the technology still being years away from practical applications. So what will future quantum computers be used for — and why are so many experts convinced they will be game-changing?
Building a computer that harnesses the unusual properties of quantum mechanics is an idea that has been in contention since the 1980s. But in the last couple of decades, scientists have made significant strides in building large-scale devices. Now, a host of tech giants from Google to IBM as well as several well-funded startups have invested significant sums into the technology — and they have created several individual machines and quantum processing units (QPUs).
