Basics of Quantum Computers

Classical and Quantum Computers #

Classical computers use bits. They process information in a binary form, which means that they either can be a 1 or a 0.. which essentially indicates the state is either “on” or “off”. They can also indicate true or false, or yes or no, for example. Quantum computers on the other hand, use qubits, which process information differently.

Difference between qubits and bits #

A qubit (short for quantum bit) is the basic unit of information in quantum computing and counterpart to the bit (binary digit) in classical computing. A qubit plays a similar role as a bit, in terms of storing information, but it behaves much differently because of the quantum properties on which it’s based¹