BBVA Working in Quantum Computing for Past Few Years

(BBVA) BBVA has been working individually and with partners in quantum computing for the past few years.
BBVA‘s quantum computing algorithms’ lead, Escolastico Sanchez, alongside specialist quantum computing start-up Multiverse Computing, is currently working with BBVA in this line of Research.
However the real power in qubits comes from what Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance”- or quantum entanglement – where pairs or more of qubits act together despite any distance between them. In computing terms, it’s as though all the bits in a classical computer were suddenly linked and could be measured simultaneously rather than one after another.
For Sanchez, this has huge potential value because of the complexity of calculations that can be done – hence why BBVA is putting resources into research and partnership so it can be, as he put it, “quantum ready for our clients”.
Take just one example, as Sanchez explains, related to RSA-2048 numbers used at the highest levels of encryption. He said: “If you were trying to solve this encryption – to find the key to decrypt – using a classical computer it would need 1034 steps to do. Even using a processor capable of a trillion operations a second it would take 317 billion years. It’s impossible.
He added though that people don’t need to fear that the world’s cryptography is about to break down, as the top quantum computers currently have just 53 qubits in processing power, and to break cryptographic codes you would need at least 1,500 – and that is still a long way off.
Sanchez explains that while we are not there yet when it comes to real world applications for quantum computing – we are getting closer by the hour and for banks like BBVA the need to constantly watch this space and play an active part in it is undeniable.