Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, has announced its reliance on advanced quantum computing, a strategic technical option for its major future projects in the field of space and aviation, identifying areas of secure communications, sensing, and high-performance computing systems, as three major tracks of future quantum computing in the company.
This came during Airbus' participation in an international conference entitled "Inside Quantum Computing Technologies", which was held via the Internet, finally, and more than 1000 experts in the field of quantum computing from research and academic bodies, and private sector companies from around the world participated in it.
3 tracks
The director of global cooperation in research and technology cooperation for «Airbus», Paulo Bianco, said during the conference that the company decided to choose quantum computing as a future strategic choice for information technology, indicating that quantum computing technologies will create a huge quantum leap in the way aircraft are built and flying.
He added that «Airbus» explores a number of quantum technologies that can be applied to meet the challenges of space, explaining that these technologies go on three main tracks.
High performance computing
Bianco indicated that the first track is high-performance quantum based computing, as the aviation industry has complex computational needs in the areas of fluid dynamics, finite element simulation, aerodynamics, aviation mechanics, etc., noting that Airbus uses advanced computing solutions In these areas, she believes that quantum computing can help her solve computationally intensive major tasks.
Quantitative communication
As for the second track, according to Bianco, it focuses on quantitative communication, as Airbus considers that current encryption algorithms, such as the widely used encryption via asymmetric keys, will not be able to fend off high-tech security attacks on computer systems and quantitative information in the future, Therefore, the company aims to develop a secure communications infrastructure in the future for its space platforms, based on quantitative information technologies, which enhance security in its basic components (algorithms, authentication and keys).
Quantitative sensing
As for the third track, Bianco reported that it is represented by quantitative sensing, pointing out that Airbus believes that quantitative sensors are more effective in measuring physical quantities, such as frequency, acceleration, rotational rates, electric and magnetic fields and temperature, with the highest absolute accuracy, in what computing systems cannot. The current achievement.
He added that the company believes that quantum computing can have direct applications in improving navigation systems, as accurate acceleration measurement is used to achieve site data, and work as loads for a range of different applications, such as climate dynamics from satellites, or surveying underground resources from an aircraft.
In addition to the three areas, he said, there are many sub-areas in which Airbus will rely on quantum computing, such as tackling flight physics problems, fuel savings and aircraft wing design with varying degrees of complexity, simulating rare elements, and others.
Similar steps
Airbus’s decision comes after similar steps taken by other international companies in the same context, including the disclosure of «Honeywell», a multinational operating in the oil and gas sectors and the military, electronic and chemical industries, last March, to operate a 64-kilobit quantitative computer to deal with problems The “super complexity” it faces in its fields of work, which the current traditional computers are unable to solve, in addition to the announcement of the German company “Volkswagen” in the same month that it has developed a very advanced quantitative algorithm, used to improve the tracks of large numbers of buses and cars, within Crowded areas, and for long distances, was able to make very fast calculations of the route of each individual bus in the fleet, and it improved it in almost real time.
Quantum computing
Quantum computing is based on a theory contrary to the theory defined by the computer industry, since in current computers information is stored in units known as “bits”, which express zero or one. As for quantitative computers, information is stored in the form of units known as “qubits”. », Which does not express zero and one, but rather about them, in addition to them a state or quantitative superpositions of both together. This means that when performing a certain process, the current computers are forced to search through all possible solutions one by one, while quantum computers work as if they are thinking about all possible answers, which makes them hundreds of times and perhaps thousands of times. For example, one of the computers High-performance needs a billion years to be able to break an electronic code consisting of only 400 numbers, while a quantum computer needs one year to break this code.