Tag Archives: quantum

[devnexus 2026] Code Your Way to Quantum-Safe Development by Solving Tomorrow’s Encryption Crisis

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Speaker: Barry Burd

See the DevNexus live blog table of contents for more posts

Shor’s algorithm

  • Quantum algorithm to factor large numbers
  • Divides very large numbers
  • Cracks RSA
  • 100K qubits
  • Harvest now; decrypt later. While can’t implement algorithm efficiently now, will be able to decrypt the data in the future. Lots of data will be stale by then, but lots won’t be (ex: social security number)

Programming quantum computers

  • Languages – OpenQASM, Qiskit (IBM), Circ (Google), Q# (Microsoft),, Strange (Johan Vos)

JEPS

  • 496 – Quantum resistant module lattice based key encapsulation mechanism – way to send a secret key. Based on difficulty in finding relationships between vectors in a lattice (grid). Generally when vectors are close to parallel (but not parallel), the more dimensions and the larger the vector is, the harder it is to subtract them
  • 497 – Quantum resistant module lattice based digital signature algorithms
  • 510 – Key Derivation Functional API
  • 527 – Post-quantum hybrid key exchanged for TLS 1.3

Qubits

  • Either 0 or 1
  • Hadamard gate turns a bit into a superposition (unresolved state)
  • Even nature doesn’t know the value until receiver reads it.
  • Unmeasured qubit has 50% chance of becoming 0 or 1 when measure it. In this example, it’s for sending a secret key which is random data.
  • An even number of Hadamard gate cancel each other out so you wind up with the initial value.

Defenses

  • Post quantum cryptography – better classical algorithms. Can run on computer have today in Java.
  • Quantum key distribution (QKD) – key exchange with quantum hardware. We know how to do this on short distances, like within a city. Experimenting at long distance, but not practical yet. Have sender hadamard some bits and each party say some information about what is hadarmard’d. Then having sender receive; confirms nobody eavesdropped on message which would change the value.

My take

Nice diagrams and code. Barry explained well. Especially the concepts that were new to me and therefore not intuitive like quantum key distribution. A little glad this wasn’t immediately applicable because my brain is full.

[2018 oracle code one] how to program a quantum computer

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You’re thinking too classically – how to program a quantum computer
Speaker: Tim Ellison
IBM

For more blog posts, see The Oracle Code One table of contents

General

  • When reach maturity of computers have today, will significantly outperform today’s classical computers
  • Need quantum computer to model quantum mechanics

Classical computers

  • Classical data and logic representation – data encoding (binary/ascii), logic gates (binary), computing circuits (built out of logic gates)
  • Need resilient bit store, data representation and algorithms. Don’t think about it much because data is reliable
  • Some problems are hard/not a good fit
    • Traveling salesman – 10 cities is 1.8 million routes. 20 cities is 1 billion billion routes
    • Optimizations (ex: minimize wastage cutting wood)- requires starting with a guess and trying all options
    • Modelling molecutes (simulate electron interactions – 25 electrons is laptop sized problems. 43 electrons ins Titan supercomputer
    • Modeling caffeine is impossible on today’s computers. But could represent in 160 quantum bits. And pharmaceuticals are far more complicated.

Quantum

  • Qubit in both 0 and 1 state at same time. Superposition
  • Collapses to a value when observe.
  • Can influence probability of it being a 0 or 1
  • Combine qubits to cause correlation of random results. Quantum entanglement “causes” both “linked” qubits to git save values.
  • Call experiments (vs programs) for quantum because results not deterministic
  • Power doubles every time add qubit.
  • 275 qubits is more states than number of atoms in universe
  • Fast to factor prime numbers using Shor’s algorithm [watch out security!]
  • Expect quantum computers to be used – chemistry, AI (classification, machine learning, linear algebra), financial services (portfolio optimization, scenario analysis, pricing)
  • Built with ions, photons, superconducting circuits.

Demo

https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qx

  • 5 qubits
  • Get 21 units (since free, it is rate limited.) Once experiment completed, get results back
  • Can run on real quantum computer or on simulator
  • Result gives you the probability of different results
  • Shows openqasm. A quantum assembly language
  • H gate puts into superposition state
  • Large program runs in O(square root of n) vs O(n^2) complexity

Resources

  • Python API: https://github.com/QISKit – build, compile/transpile and execute
  • Run experiments: https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qx

Journey

  • Science is well understood
  • Machines currently error prone. Nothing can do on quantum that can’t do on classical (yet)
  • Quantum Advantage – being able to benefit from quantum
  • Prediction: less than 5 years for chemistry. 10-15 years for breaking cryptography
  • Starting to build data centers in Poughkeepsie (upstate NY)

My take: The basics of this I’ve heard before. It was cool seeing IBM’s experiment generator used. It’ll be interesting seeing where this goes. The speaker said this was normally a 2 hour talk. I liked the part about applications of quantum and how they are built. I also liked seeing the assembly and graphical code.