Quantum computing: the Élysée sees it as a strategic issue

This Thursday morning in Saclay, in the Paris region, Emmanuel Macron will himself announce a major plan to support quantum computing.

The Élysée sees it as a strategic issue.

France is clearly moving up a gear in this area which is a little esoteric for the general public but crucial for our sovereignty.

So what is it all about?

In short, by dint of progress, we are almost at the end of traditional computing: for 50 years, it is Moore's law, the power of microprocessors has doubled every 18 months.

Our computers are more and more powerful.

But there comes a time when we come up against the physical and material limits of miniaturization.

If we want to continue to increase the computing power of machines, we know that we will no longer be able to do so by trying to burn smaller and smaller elements.

We must therefore switch to a completely different technology.

In everyday language, we say that we need a "quantum leap".

This means concretely that we must move to machines whose heart is not made up of smaller and smaller microprocessors but of particles: cold atoms, ions, photons.

It is indeed a revolution.

A revolution that has already started: in France we have excellent physicists, large pioneering companies, foremost among which Atos, which Thierry Breton, and now his successor Elie Girard, have resolutely taken on this path.

Thales is also a major player.

And then we have many startups engaged in this revolution, in short there is a French ecosystem of quantum computing, but which deserves to be supported, hence this plan announced by the president earlier, 1, 8 billion euros over five years.

Because at the same time, the United States, with IBM, Google and others, and China are mobilizing even more considerable resources.

Why such an investment in quantum computing?

To visualize the potential, imagine that a quantum machine will be able to do in a few hours what the best current computers would have taken, not months, but millions of years to do: you can see the "quantum leap"!

Total wants to use this technology to simulate CO2 capture, it can be used to develop drugs much faster than today, to model nuclear production, to develop artificial intelligence, obviously to encrypt data, applications. in defense are very numerous etc.

Clearly, the countries which will master quantum computing will have an absolutely decisive advance over the others.

When I tell you that there is a major issue of sovereignty here, it is not an empty word ...