(CNN) — Creating revolutionary pharmaceutical drugs, testing new materials for cars and simulating how market scenarios can affect banks — these are just some of the tasks that could take months or years to develop, even with the most advanced computers.

But what if that timeframe could be cut down to minutes or hours?

That’s the promise behind quantum computing, a field that’s been studied for decades and has garnered increasing interest — and investments — from tech giants and startups alike.

On Wednesday, IBM revealed its new experimental Loon processor and Nighthawk quantum computing chip, which can perform more complex computations than its predecessor. The past two years have seen quantum-related announcements from Google , Microsoft and other tech companies.

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