Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has channelled his Canadian counterpart in explaining quantum computing to a Sydney university full of top scientists.
Opening a new quantum computing lab complex at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Mr Turnbull took a leaf from Canadian PM Justin Trudeau in unpacking the technology.
The prime minister warmed up the 100-strong crowd of academics with a rundown on digital processing.
"Conventional computing, which as you know we call digital processing, which depends on transistors with a series of on and off switches, ones and zeros, if you like, that's the digital world," Mr Turnbull said at UNSW on Friday morning.
"(It's) extraordinarily fast, but we are reaching a finite limit."
Mr Turnbull then unleashed on the power of quantum computing, saying UNSW was positioned firmly at the fore.
"Quantum computing has the ability to revolutionise this (computing)," he said.
"(Using) a silicon environment to render the phosphorous atom which is the qubit, which is the particle being manipulated in a way that can operate in more than one state at once.
"This super-positioning of the qubit enables vastly more rapid processing than we've had before. But of course, this is a very dynamic environment, it isn't a series of on-off switches.
"How do you render it stable, how do you control it, how do you stimulate it to do what you want, and how do you ensure that it remembers what it's done for a long enough period to be practically useful?"
Mr Turnbull said UNSW was leading the global pack in the research area.
"We looked at the memory time earlier that's been achieved here, a million times more than has been achieved in other labs around the world," he said.
"The use of silicon so stable to provide that environment, plus the super-cold environment, enables a quantum computer to be built here that will become more than a theory, will be become a reality, a truly supercomputer.
"The quantum computer, a processing power hitherto unimaginable, and certainly not realised."
He said the university, in Sydney's east, was up to 10 years ahead of any other in the world.
"There has never been a more exciting time to be in quantum computing than right here," Mr Turnbull quipped, to raucous laughter.
The new labs house six ultrahigh-tech "scanning and tunnelling" microscopes, which are used to manipulate individual atoms, along with cryogenic dilution fridges capable of reaching temperatures close to absolute zero.
The facilities will double UNSW's capacity in the field, as it fends off global competitors in the race to build the first quantum computer in silicon.
The prime minister said the cutting-edge technology fed into his government's declaration of war on cyber crimes, which he announced on Thursday.
"Quantum computing has the ability to create the most unbreakable codes (and) decipher the codes of today because it has that extraordinary processing power," he said.
Share
