I love chatting about science with whoever I find myself with and learning together through those interactions. A few times I’ve found myself talking about Quantum Computing and specifically discussing why quantum computers are required for quantum calculations. That is, restating the question, why can’t we just simulate quantum calculations on the powerful computers we have today?
The quick answer is that the amount of data (numbers) required to do those quantum calculations grows way too large very quickly as the size of the calculation grows. So yes, we can simulate very simple quantum calculations that require only a few quantum bits, or qubits, but as the number of qubits grows, that data required for the calculation grows too large for our computers to handle - at least with the current math that we use for quantum calculations.
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