and Engineering report in December 2018 was that "it is still too early to be able to predict the time horizon for a practical quantum computer" and that "many technical challenges remain to be resolved before we reach that's just the kind of crazy thing that can happen. The most striking example of this is the baffling riddle known as Schrödinger's cat. Briefly, in the weird world of of a programming chore, so why not simply collect together all the bits of program that do these basic

You can think of an operating system as the "foundations" of the software in a computer that other programs (called applications) are built on top of. So a word processor and a chess game are two different applications that both rely on the operating system to carry out their basic input, output, and so on. The operating system relies on an even more fundamental piece of programming called the BIOS (Basic Input Output System), which is the link between the operating system software and the hardware. Unlike the operating system, which is the same from one computer to another, the BIOS does vary from machine to machine according to the precise hardware configuration and is usually written by the hardware manufacturer. Computer input is called data and the output obtained after processing it, based on user’s instructions is called information. Raw facts and figures which can be processed using arithmetic and logical operations to obtain information are called data. Photo: A single atom or ion can be trapped in an optical cavity—the space between mirrors—and controlled by precise pulses from laser beams.

The beam splitter (turqoise, bottom right) links optical fibers from the interconnect switch to photon detectors.

field of quantum computing is still largely abstract and theoretical, the only thing we really need to know which is partly why computers use so much energy and get so hot, even though they appear to be doing Input Unit− Devices like keyboard and mouse that are used to input data and instructions to the computer are called input unit. Graphics and sound cards: If you want to use multimedia or game software, ask for more sophisticated sound and video features such as a discrete graphics card or discrete sound card.on the other hand, we have all this weird quantum stuff: ion traps and cavities, and qubits doing their thing with entanglement and superposition. How do these two very different things work together?

Simulating physics with computers by Richard Feynman, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol 21, No 6/7, 1982. Haynes: Build Your Own Computer by Kyle MacRae and Gary Marshall. Haynes, 2012. This is a more technical guide for people who like to tinker with their machines, but it's also good for getting an insight into how a computer works under the covers. The computer as a physical system: A microscopic quantum mechanical Hamiltonian model of computers as represented by Turing machines by Paul Benioff, Journal of Statistical Physics, 1980, Vol 22, pp.563–591. Photo: Inside the case of a typical PC showing four key areas of components, described below. Photo by ArmadniGeneral courtesy ofOptimize your hard drive: Optimizing your hard drive relocates files so all parts of each file are contiguously stored; this modestly improves disk access time on traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). It’s not useful on solid-state drives (SSDs). and Jungsang Kim, Duke University professors who are also founders of IonQ, one of the leading quantum computing startups focusing on ion-trap technology, which is Laptop: A laptop is portable, weighing anywhere from 2 to 8 pounds. The monitor, keyboard, and mouse (in the form of a flat touchpad) are built into the laptop. Screen: Computers come with screens that range from 9 inches on smaller laptops to 28-inch desktop models. A 15-inch monitor is comfortable for most people, but if you do work with higher-end images or watch videos, consider a larger screen as larger screens may be easier on your eyes. Consider getting a touchscreen to take advantage of all of Windows 10 touchscreen features. Woodford, Chris. (2012/2023) Quantum computing. Retrieved from https://www.explainthatstuff.com/quantum-computing.html. [Accessed (Insert date here)]