I often think of Saint Augustine (a.k.a. Augustine of Hippo), who famously said: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

Much the same is true of quantum computing. Most of us in the back of our minds think we have at least a bit of a clue… but this happy believe survives only until we try to explain it to someone else, at which point we realize we really don’t have a clue at all.

I keep on seeing new quantum computing and quantum cryptography related announcements. Sometimes I feel like Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. “Here comes another bloody quantum,” he exclaims when he’s exposed to some new-fangled magic emanating from the High Energy Magic Building at Unseen University.

I’ve written about quantum computing a bit myself (see Unleashing the Power of Quantum Computing and Affordable Rack-Mount Quantum Computers Are Here and Did AI Just Prove Our Understanding of “Quantum” is Wrong, for example), but this has only increased my awareness of how little I know.

The trouble is that there’s always so much to do and so little time to do it all in. What we need is someone to read all the literature and then explain it to us in words we can all understand. Any volunteers?

Way back in the mists of time we used to call 2012, when I was wearing a younger man’s clothes, I was invited to host a website called All Programmable Planet. This bodacious beauty was intended to cover programable devices, tools, and technologies of all persuasions, with a focus on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).

One of the potential audiences I wished to address was that of design engineers who were experts in the wily ways of microcontroller units (MCUs), but who wouldn’t know an FPGA if it crawled up their leg and bit them in the… assk no questions.

I turned to my friend, Duane Benson, who had been working with MCUs for many years, using them in his motor controller and robot projects. However, Duane was discovering that his MCUs were running out of power and flexibility. There were some tasks that just needed more “oomph” than his standalone MCUs had to offer. Thus, he kindly volunteered to learn all about FPGAs from scratch, and to document his progress in a series of blogs.

Suffice it to say that these blogs were tremendously successful… right until the sponsors pulled the plug on the site. “Oh dear,” I said (or words to that effect). But we digress. The reason I’m waffling on about all this here is that I just received an email from Duane, who spake as follows:

Hi Max, Happy New Year!

Many, many years ago, I made a vow that I would never let my brain get so old that "my kids would have to program my VCR for me." Not that VCRs are still around or still need to be programmed, but the point was that I never wanted to give up on learning new things.

I've written a few articles about quantum computing and done a lot of reading. Yet I still have no idea how these things actually perform their computations. Taking some inspiration from my vow—coupled with the columns I did for All Programmable Planet where I journaled my learning process with FPGAs—I've decided to do the same thing with Quantum Computers.

This time though, I am putting together my own newsletter, to be called the Quantum Edge Newsletter. I'm going to research each and every bit (ne qubit) of information I can find and publish a weekly newsletter with my findings. Hopefully, by the end of the year or sooner, I will be able to answer and explain the question of just how a QPU performs calculations and solves problems at the fundamental level.

If you're interested in following my quantum fumbles, you can sign up at www.quantumedge.today

All I can say is that I didn’t need to be asked twice. I just bounced over to Duane’s Quantum Edge site and subscribed (it’s free). You should sign up too!

I have a feeling that it won’t be long before someone asks me a question about quantum computing and I respond, “Well, according to Duane Benson…”