Nowadays, we are witnessing a series of scientific and technological breakthroughs in an area of research where Information Theory and Quantum Physics are combined and give rise to new and powerful ways of processing and transmitting information. In particular, quantum computers will be able to solve problems that are beyond the capabilities of existing supercomputers.In this talk I will explain how those devices work, review the current efforts to build them, and give some examples of their potential impact. I will mainly concentrate in quantum simulators, capable of solving quantum many-body problems where conventional computers require resources (time and memory) typically growing exponentially with system size. Both quantum computers or analog quantum simulators may perform that task in a much more efficient way. I will review some of the quantum algorithms that have been proposed for this task and then explain the advantages and disadvantages of analog quantum simulators.
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