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IBM Develops Quantum Computer
JSC writes: "IBM has developed a quantum computer consisting of five atoms that work as the processor and memory. It's a nice advance of the state of the art...unfortunately, we won't see them on the shelves for about 20 years." Update: 08/15 06:49 PM by H :Check out the official IBM release - thanks to netMonkey for the update.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
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I am waiting to see what we are going to get, in terms of cpu's five years from now, with things advancing the way they are....
If we refuse to be flexible, we are in effect opting out of the game of life. The world moves on without us.
a beowulf cluster of these? :)
:)
Come on, I deserve karma for posting it on-topic and using my real name
Man, 20 years? well, I bet we will still be arguing whether it should run Linux on Windows by the time these puppy's hit the market...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Can they make it out of Everlasting Gobstoppers instead?
"Linux? Looks like a thousand monkeys at a thousand keyboards to me. Of course, they also throw feces"
This will allow the government to crack 5-bit encryption in fractions of a second! Think of the repercussions for privacy! No longer will the NSA have to brute force their way through the entire keyspace (more than 30 possible keys!)
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Did I read that right? 5 atoms that work as a processor and memory? Geez... I just don't know where I will find room for that on my desk...
-toup
If people have trouble keeping track of their laptops, I can easily see myself misplacing one of these...
The anti-salmon
5 Atoms? We won't see them on the shelve's at all - unless your eyesight's a lot better than mine...
PigPog.
Wow, pocket lint atoms used for computers. An untapped resource?
This state would represent both zero and one and everything in between. Instead of solving the problem by adding all the numbers in order, a quantum computer would add all the numbers at the same time.
Does that mean I'll be able to be everywhere at once? Of course that could work both ways -- being everywhere presents a big target...
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
Will be interesting to see if cryptography can find a way around this...or will this become a technology that only `they` can use?
There's much more detailed information from IBM Research than was included in the press release. It's interesting that apparently Los Alamos has already developed a 7-qubit computer, it's just that they haven't used it to solve a real math problem yet.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
I wonder what's going to happen to us programmers. I had heard a while ago in Scientific American that programming Quamtum Computers required a radically different approach than those used today. I wonder how much different it will be, and how us "old-timers" will deal with it.
...how clusterable is it? 2000 of them working in parallel...can you say "Exaflop", boys and girls? RC5 might just get cracked pretty damn quick with that thing.
So when's the PSC getting one?
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Let's hope that by 2020, when quantum computing hits the market, Intel will be close to rolling out the PXIII and promising that within 5 years they will make the jump out of x86 architecture. Of course, I'm probably being impractical...
"These are the days that must happen to you." -Walt Whitman
Moore's Law is not an axiom (a law which is accepted without proof). It's more of a rule of thumb.
Perhaps a quantum processing unit (QPU?) would be more useful as a self-contained accelerator card for a traditional computer.
Which brings us to something I've always wondered: How does does one (efficientl) program a quantum computer? Wouldn't the time spent configuring the atoms with their billions of values exceed the time saved by the quantum operations?
Mass-producing quantum computers would require fabs to completely overhaul the existing equipment that they purchased for the production of Silicon chips. Considering how long it took Intel to merely migrate to hardware that would allow them to produce chips at .18 micron instead of .25 micron, I would not expect existing companies to migrate to the production of quantum computers until well after they have been used as supercomputers for a few years. We may see quantun supercomputers being produced within the next 20 years, but it will probably be far longer before people can purchase them for home use.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Is it possible that IBM has also developed the world's first Heisenberg compensator?
Don't sneeze!
PigPog's Law: The number of atoms in a quantum computer will double every 18 months.
PigPig Gates says: We'll never need more than 640 protons.
PigPog's Uncertainty Principle: We may know where the computer is or which direction it just blew off the table, but never both at the same time.
PigPog.
Note that the 3dfx video card is 4 of the 5 atoms, and 2 of the 4 are atomic fans. Otherwise, the whole thing would split from the heat. You thought melting was bad -- imagine your computer going critical and wiping out the city! Dang overclockers....
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
It mentions that quantum computing will be incredibly useful for key-cracking, web-searching etc, but does anyone know what difference this will make to the end-user?
Also, how are we going to program these baby's? Surely current techniques, languages etc. will all be insufficient?
Questions, questions.
Also, while I'm at it, This is a good place for a quantum computing primer.
Will Quantum Computers be the smallest computers ever build?
So after Quantum Computers, Computers would only get bigger and bigger.
It sounds like a strange idea.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
This thing can do billions of calculations at once.. It can crack RSA in the blink of an eye.. figure out nuclear simulations, DNA decoding and predict the weather.. Can't wait until someone compiles PERL on it.. Onion
http://twitter.com/onion2k
"Where do you want to go today | tomorrow | yesterday?"
Why the hell would any normal person ever need something like this? "Ooooh daddy, can I get the QZ-5900 please?!?! I want to calculate solar radiation flux! I want to simulate nuclear detonations! I want to solve the traveling salesman problem for 29 billion routes!"
These are the kinds of problems that quantum computers are geared to compute. Not for playing games, not for doing spreadsheets, and definitely not anything for the store shelves. The only thing that might even tangentially intersect with the common interests is decryption, and I assure you the government will take care of preventing that kind of technology from ever getting into our hands. If we ever see quantum computers in commercial hardware, it will be in very specialized devices that do tasks that 95% of civilization doesn't care about.
I would think that a chip like this would be great for PDA's, laptops, just about anything. Really fast, very tiny, and I doubt it consumes any power at all... good deal. I wonder if in even twenty years it will be affordable though. IBM will have to pay off over 20 years of development!
How the hell am I supposed to overclock this one?
-ct
I understand that a quantum computer can solve a problem in a single step, but how is this possible? Especially if one involved multiple variables or possible outcomes? Would it require multiple problem variants, or something to the effect?
How is it possible for a quantum computer to do this, but not a conventional one?
I guess that my big question is this: Are these huge benefits only available in these areas, or could this be used to create a faster general purpose machine?
I know that algorithmic research for these machines is very different than standard CS. Is it just that we've only found good quantum algorithms for these applications? Or is it just that the quantum properties lend themselves to incredible speedups for these specific problems?
I don't know if anyone here can answer these questions, but I'm sure that some of you know more than I do about it! :)
Now who is going to come up with the coolest case for this computer? I was thinking some PVC pipes and a glowing skull...
-toup
my quantum computer and my cat were in the same box and now the cat is dead. I know because I looked.
Arm yourself with knowledge.
Well, there are a couple of problems with this...
1) There have been MULTIPLE critical Windows updates in the past 6 months...one off the top of my head is the "Outlook Sercurity Fix" that was supposed to do away with the ILOVEYOU virus that happend recently...
2) Just because there are no updates does not mean there are not any problems...what kind of logic is that? It also doesn't mean things are improving. You can't tell me there are no problems with Windows.
3) While I was busy imagining how long it would be before a *stable* version of Linux came out for it, I thought..."Hey...how long has it been since A *stable* version of Windows came out PERIOD???"
I would argue more but my computer is about to crash and needs to be rebooted...
So is anybody working on a Linux port yet?
Here's a good starting point for the non-physicist:
Quantum Computation: A Tutorial
Unfortunately, since the task of creating workable and useful algorithms for quantum computers is still in its infancy, I very much doubt present day programmers will ever be able to sit in front on one and hack away at a piece of code. Quantum algorithms are very different from those we use in current computers.
See QUIC at CalTech or the Centre for Quantum Computation at Oxford for more information on quantum algorithms.
And, in fact, has had a working 7qubit computer since March (2000)...
h tm
This article is an easy read with a GREAT summary of the history, applications, and iswsues in quantum computing: http://www.techreview.com/articles/may00/waldrop.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Gordon Moore from the interview:
Anyhow, while we were making these first mesa transistors, completing development of the process and putting them into production, we had a person whose background was as a theoretician, as part of the original group, by the name of John Hoerni. And particularly when we setting up the initial equipment, John was writing in his notebook and coming up with ideas of things to try, and he came up with a proposal... of instead of making a 'mesa,' which exposes the sensitive area of the transistor to the outside world, that one should just do more of these diffusions--oxide mask diffusions--and leave the oxide over the top of the junction, the sensitive part. Well, that was something that previously had been considered a bad idea because Bell Labs' conventional wisdom was that the oxide was dirty and you wanted to get rid of it.
But we couldn't try John's idea right away because it took four index masking operations in order to make the structure he was proposing and Bob Noyce only bought three lenses!
[Laughter.]
For quite some time, it was just a mind game. That was until real algorithms were discovered/invented to take advantage of these curiosities. With powerfully fast algorithms for factoring large integers (the source of encryption's security), searching, etc. they stand poised to change the face of computing. Imagine things such as cracking 1024-bit encyrtption or searching the entire phone-book in one operation.
Of course, the tricky part is to build one. Since they rely on quantum properties, they are easily bumped into a real state. But this is the source of their power too. If one particle can be in two states, then a string of particles can represent every n-bit binary number combination possible!
There are several different ways to go about quantum computing. Some use lasers to cool individual atoms to an energy-level where theyt can be controlled reliably. Others use the bulk-effect of quantum states dtected with nuclear magnetic resonance (ironaically, the caffeine molecule prooves to be particulary useful in this setup).
As of yet, they've been able to do some pretty simple arithmetic with only a few bits of information.
As for how it will change computing and programming, the best guess I've heard is that there might be quantum coprocessors someday (much like the old math-coprocessors). You see, quantum computers are thus far very good at certain kind of operations and not so good at others. This is very similar to traditional CPUs (which suck at factoring numbers in a reasonable amount of time). The two compliment each other.
I knew that information I gleaned while writing that college paper on Quantum Computing would come in handy!
On a similar note, Quantum Encryption is a related field where quantum-entanglement is used to transmit information securely. If someone were to try and eaves-drop on the system the system would collapse into a real state and the information would not be intercepted.
Quantum crypto-cracking (given, say, a 40qubit system) makes cracking traditional crypto insanely easy. IIRC from the defcon quantum crypto talk, it is SQRT(Original keypsace) in difficulty to crack, instead of (Original keyspace).
This means, longer keys, and eventually quantum computing to enable OTPs (One-Time Pads -- yes, with Quantum computing they're possible, and, better yet, functional!)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I wish the AltaVista article had some more information about the process. A 5-atom quantum computer is great, but what can it do? I'd be impressed with even a simple "hello" application, or the soution of a simple problem, but AFAICT everyone seems to be waiting for the 7- and 10-atom models.
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IBM seems to be doing more research and development than anyone else these days yet they don't seem to be focusing one one or two markets. They are already this big bulky monster. Why are they trying to expand like this?
I heard a talk on this about six months ago (when the largest quantum computer was a whopping two bits) and I think it should be made more clear that this type of computer does not do procedural computations (it'd have to be reset every time if I understood right) -- its main application would be mathematical algorithms. The example I was given was in prime-factoring numbers (which is where all of the cryptography comes in), and as far as I know, this is the only use anyone has invented for such a computer.
There's no such thing as stable. It's like claiming that the human body's temperature remains constant. Sure, average, it stays pretty close. But your extremities (sp?) are usually cooler than your torso region, and there's always localized variation, as your body carries out exothermic and endothermic reactions all over the place, all the time, for your entire life.
The same is true for software, especially the various OS's application software runs on. There will always be bugs to fix -- you can't write 14 million lines of code without a bug (Windows 9X is about 14 million LOC I believe) -- the odds against it are just too remote to consider. And fixing some bugs will invariably cause a few more. Factor in new software with new features, new hardware components with their own problems, the device drivers for that hardware, and you begin to see the problem.
A system can't remain stable for long unless it lives in a vacuum. Computers, Operating Systems, Application Software -- none of these exist in a vacuum. Change is inevitable, and "the Problem" of keeping these things in relative harmony will thus always be with us.
So, if you can accept that any OS will always have to change, improve, adapt, etc., the question remains as to "which is better." Right now, Linux/Unix/***BSD/Whatever open source will remain a better technical solution -- more people looking at the problem means a higher chance of solving it. Closed souce solutions like WinBlows can't hope to keep up in an incremental fashion. They've done ok so far by enjoying and taking advantage of better hardware/driver support and a better application suite (in most respects), and of course better marketing and a lower learning curve. But, if they lose that advantage, they'll be through. If Office 2000 was available on Linux, there's no reason half the desktops in the US couldn't run Linux instead, almost immediately. The receptionist and the HR staff don't care what OS Word runs on, as long as it's reasonably predicatable and stable and fast.
I'd keep ranting, but lunch beckons...
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Well all you ahve to do is learn perl then you can use D. Conway's Quantum::Superposition module, a nice OO Module for using quantum computing in everyday code.
``A quantum computer could eventually be used for practical purposes such as database searches -- for example searching the Web could be sped up a great deal -- but probably not for more mundane tasks such as word processing,''
I really appreciate to see that, though quantum computers could help solving problems, they don't denigrate what came before this.
This will change from "fashion-effects" that make people forget what was sufficient until something new appeared. For example, look at how quick people got rid of the command line when the first GUIs appeared.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
I don't know about Windows improving. As far as using Windows Update... I'm lucky if I only have to re-install Windows every month or couple weeks. And what makes you think it will take longer to make a version of Linux stable on a quantum processor than it will for a Windows os? Windows is already *unstable* and Linux is already very *stable*.
A Programming Language for Quantum Computers
There is also a good, comprehensive website at
OpenQubit
but it seems to be in need of a new maintainer.
My understanding is that quantum computer simulators allow one to mimic the output of a quantum computer, but without the time speed-up that real quantum hardware would provide. So algorithms can be tested out, slowly, even before powerful quantum hardware is developed. I suspect some problems can also be better expressed in a quantum computing language and would therefore be solved more easily even on classical hardware.
On the subject of simulating quantum physics on classical hardware, in the book The Feynman Processor and in Feynman's own papers it is stated that a classical computer can never perfectly simulate quantum physics. But from the evidence they give it seems merely impractical, not impossible. There can be a huge penalty in the number of steps and time required but no clear reason why a simple quantum physics system could not be perfectly simulated on a powerful classical computer. Anyone have any insight on this problem?
AlpineR
Word: If you're between the ages of 14-18, START STUDYING QUANTUM COMPUTING NOW!!!
Why? Long explanation:
I read half of a book called Introduction to Quantum Computing (can't remember the author, but I bought it at Siggraph'99 -- there was a huge pile of this book in one booth).
Anyway, the book is great. It's almost a step-by-step guide to the math behind quantum computing while still maintaining the physical analogy. I got to the part where they discuss Feynman's method for building a quantum adder (which was merely a trivial demonstration of how to get a QM to do a classical computation).
In chapter 5 or 6, the book starts explaining how to build a Hamiltonion (QM operator function, kinda like a Laplace transfer function H(s)) for the square root of a NOT gate, I realized that anyone who's brain has been fed classical computing concepts based on Turing and Von Neuman is DOOMED to not grok this stuff (or perhaps it's becuase I'm almost 30 and my brain has turned to sand). It's kinda like trying to go from C to LISP.
So kids, that's why I recommend that you start growing the synapses now. Start growing the synapses that will help you understand this stuff before the patterns of classical computing cure in your young gray matter.
(Yeah I love how every reporter goes from: "Fascinating new qubit which is 0 and 1 simultaneously because of spin..." to "...so the qubits add all of the numbers at once to find the asnwer in one step". If you can't explain something in a 5th grade english, you don't understand it.)
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Atticka
No sig here...
I want to calculate solar radiation flux! I want to simulate nuclear detonations! I want to solve the traveling salesman problem for 29 billion routes!
You know that's exactly the sort of thing that the old Crays were used for. That was back in the day when "supercomputer" meant something, and these beasts only existed in ones and twos in places like Los Alamos, Sandia, and maybe Exxon.
And back then people thought the exact same things that you are saying now. "Who other than a weapons research lab could possibly use this"? The answer that surprised people is "just about everyone". The Cray-1 may be an inert piece of history now, but it's spirit lives on in our microprocessors. It's not just that modern PC's are as fast as old supercomputers, they are designed like old supercomputers.
Most innovations in computer architecture in the PC/workstation/server area have been taken from the supercomputers that came before. Surely the original researchers never dreamed that all of the complicated methods they were inventing to speed up supercomputers would wind up running some kid's game -- but they have.
Modern systems are blazingly fast, yet people continually feel the need to upgrade. In the PC biz, this seems to be driven by games and MS-bloat. Whatever the case, technology marches on, and people are willing to pay for more power. If you have the transistor budget, why not build a supercomputer on a chip? There's a market for it.
My point (such as it is) is that the hunger for performance shows no sign of stopping. It may seem ridiculous to us that an average person could ever use this much computing power. But bear in mind, that this won't even hit supercomputers for ~20 years. Think what people ~20 years ago would think about the kind of computing power that we use for games today. They would be stunned.
A little historical perspective, that's all...
--Lenny
On a related note, what about overclocking? Can I add my own atoms to get better frame rates for Quantum Quake, or do some quantum mechanic-y stuff? Although now instead of crashes if you go too dar, now I guess the CPU undergoes fusion and destroys the neighborhood, or rips the fabric of space-time with similar effects.
How soon before it runs 2-bit Linux? ;-)
Considering the number of atoms to a Mole, it would probably still require the average brick to run windows...
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I bet java will still run slow on a quantum computer :)
-Ben
True, it's easier to break traditional prime-number based ciphers with quantum machines, but there is an effectively unbreakable cipher which can be built off a quantum computer - one that relies off the position of the atoms used as they fly through refractors that "trap" the states, and a system that relies on public-key ideas to keep that atom key a secret.
They cite quantum money as a potential example (an idea developed in the 1970s). There are some truly mindblowing consequences to an unbreakable cipher.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Why must it be a hardware matter? Is there any software simulating the fenomena? Write if so..
Has anyone here seen the film Casino? Its a great one by the way.
There is a particular scene between two organized criminals and it is very cryptographic without being encrypted. What they are speaking of is spoken differently than they really mean. A 'meet me at the golf course at 6' really means something like 'gate 55b at the airport at 3am' or something to that effect.
The point is there is more to cryptography than just standard encryption of messages. I have a feeling agencies like the NSA are going to have access to quantum computing before the rest of the planet, and at that time (unless they haven't already got them in place), keeping communications and personal files secure is going to require an other dimension or 3. This is all theory, so I might just be blowing smoke out of my ass, but I'm sure that some sort of encrypting, encrypted, encrypted, encrypted messaging will be developed, and not just with standard ordered scrambling of data. The messages/algorithms/whatever, assuming they actually meant something to multiple parties that wish to securely communicate (i.e. golf course means gate 55b and 6 means 3am)
What's the betting that there'll be a story on C|Net tomorrow where some IBM research guy claims that they're considering porting Linux to this thing "just to see how small it can scale down"?
PigPog.
"...unfortunately, we won't see them on the shelves for about 20 years."
You're predicting we'll be able to see 5 atoms on a shelf in 20 years?!
Cool! That's a bigger story than the quantum computer!
If you have to reinstall Windows every month then you need to spend a little more time learning how to fix the problems. My machine has not been formatted of reinstalled since DOS 5. Yes there have been hardware upgrades, but never has it been formatted/new install or reinstalled. It now sits as a Win98SE machine that is relativly stable (as far as windows goes).
Hell, if I had to reinstall once a month, I'd call it WinBlows too.
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tobam'i: foo for the masses.
"...unfortunately, we won't see them on the shelves for about 20 years." Even if there was one on a shelf, you'd need an electron microscope to see it.... I see the support calls now.. 1. Where's the power switch? 2. Where do I put my 5 1/4" floppy disk? 3. Will it run my 1982 accounting program that runs in MS Basic? 4. MS Windows crashed again. Why? and so on. Of course Apple would come out with all sorts of cool colors that no one could see.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
see here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2000/mar29/quantu m.html
That used NMR to measure the quantum spin of atoms in molecules of a liquid. The same information is stored in all molecules of the liquid, and read by measuring the quantum spin of the liquid as a whole (a form of signal amplification).
Incidently, the more atoms you can use in a molecule, the more qubits you get. Consequently, caffiene (which has a bunch of suitable atoms in its molecule) may be the quantum memory of the future (insert ironic note here).
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I have a question I'd like to throw out to the more qualified members of slashdot about quantum computing. What will these computers do for biological studies, particularly DNA sequence analysis or evolutionary studies. Won't these computers make maximum likelyhood and parsimony analysis a snap?
If anyone is familiar with the mitochondrial Eve studies? Mitochondria samples from 157(?) ethnic groups were compared to establish the most likely clade based upon genetic divergence. This study only tested those models thought to be correct as testing all possible permutations would have supposedly taken a normal computer tens of millions of years to compute. Would this be the kind of question for a quantum computer to solve? How many q-bits would be needed and how long until such a computer is available to the general scientific community?
I have to admit first off here that I haven't read up as much as I should about quantum computing. Nontheless, I find myself wondering: what will it be like writing software for a quantum computer? Will quantum machines even be stored-program computers?
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Is hooking up the Schrodinger's Cat to my computer. Will it use Cat 5 cable? Or will there be a higher class for Quantum PC / Quantum Cat interface? And then of course whenever an operation fails or the computer crashes, I have to change the cat, and dispose of the dead one. What a pain in the ass. . .
Also, the other nifty uses for public-key, such as digital cash, zero-knowledge proofs, and digital signatures will be lost. I don't know if elliptic curve has the same vulnerability as factoring primes, so we might be able to keep some of this.
Also, don't forget that creating a machine to crack today's crypto will be faster that rolling out an entirely new network for the new quantum crypto. For a while, everything will be transparent, and what do we do during that time?
So where's the QNX port?
That is a nice module. But THE programming language to use will be prolog, because it already works by the paradigm that would be used to program quantum computer: describe the rules behind the problem, fix those variables you know, and the solution finds itself.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
All those cycles...hmmm could it be sentient? Starting to sound a little like Sid 6.7.
I think you can find the answer in Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind".
The main point of that book is that a computer will never be able to "think" like a human. He demonstrate this in a very mathematical way, using Turing machines. This part of the book is very "mathematical" and its conclusions must be regarded as true.
The second part of the book is more speculative, where Penrose speculates human brains work with quantum physics principles.
There's another book where Penrose and Stephen Hawkings discuss his point of view.
Fh
Maybe this will finally help me solve P=NP...
Right now my solution:
P=NP where N=1 just doesn't seem to work...
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
Burris
Sigh. I submitted this story early this morning and it was promptly rejected. This seems to happen a lot. So forget it, I'm not submitting stories anymore. In fact, I think I'll make my OWN site to post my stories. Yeah, that's it...
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
This part of the book is very "mathematical" and its conclusions must be regarded as true.
Actually, many reseachers, in both physics and AI, do not regard it is true. And the question of "intelligent computers" is still an open one.
Just because something is mathematical doesn't make it true. It may follow from the assumptions, but it is Penrose's assumptions that are in dispute.
See Dennet's Consciousness Explained for an example of a viewpoint opposed to Penrose's.
Steve M
This "quantum computer" is actually a vial full of mole quantities of different quantum computers. You poke at them with radio waves to program them and then use an NMR to read the results, which are a vote by all of the molecules.
That's fine, as long as 10^23 votes is enough to overwhelm any errors. But for a serious number of qubits, the unavoidable chance of quantum bitflip in each atom means that eventually less than one of those 10^23 molecules is in the correct starting state. Perhaps you can solve this by quantum error correction - the algorithms aren't worked out yet - but that multiplies the number of bits needed for a given problem by a factor of (provably) 2 or (probably) 3. Then you have the problem that any operation can only involve closely neighboring bits; to add register A to register C requires huge numbers of operations to shuffle with register B. Finally, to read or write to any given bit, you need a unique frequency to address that bit. With hundreds of bits, only a few can possibly have frequencies that stand out enough. These problems, combined, add one or more factors of N to the resources necessary; it's still polynomial, but...
Quantum dots - single particles, NOT entire atoms, confined electrically to a single quantum state - are more hopeful. Because they can be physically rearranged or put in more complex configurations and still physically addressed on an individual basis, the problems above go away or become more manageable.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
well with th geforce 2 ultra giving you 60 fps at 1600X1200 32 bit color...not sure why you'd need Quake to run faster than that...
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David Deutsch (an Oxford physicist) wrote The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes - And Its Implications, a book which discusses his proposed "Theory of Everything" that combines quantum theory, evolution, computation and epistemology (the theory of knowledge) into an attempt at a unified means of explaining everything that can be explained. He argues persuasively that interference effects in quantum physics are convincing evidence of parallel universes, and his contention is that quantum computing involves enormous numbers (e.g. 10 to the 100th power) of parallel universes cooperating (via interference effects) to perform massively parallel computations, and that cryptography depending on difficult computations (such as factoring large numbers) will suddenly become tractable computations (even by brute force) when the quantum computers and algorithms get sophisticated enough. That 2048-bit RSA key you may have generated may not be ultimately as secure as you thought... It's an interesting book that's worth reading. Just make sure you're prepared to think about it when you read it!
Quantum::Superpositions
nothing excels in every environment
Yes, but how do you know it's really there?
Can you imagine the bugs on this thing? Instead of 1+1=1.99938427, 1+1 would = 1.99938427, OR 3.27329436 OR 2.489302434, depending on what method you use to observe the answer. You could know either the momentum of the answer OR the location of the answer, but never both at the same time!
And wouldn't the computer travel in the form of a wave and a particle? How do you put a wave into your carry-on luggage??
The implications are staggering!
I doubt if linux or windows will exist in 20 years. I bet there will be something completely different. 20 years is a long time, and anything can happen.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
It will still take two minutes to boot up Win2020!
one that relies off the position of the atoms used as they fly through refractors that "trap" the states, and a system that relies on public-key ideas to keep that atom key a secret.
:(
Problem is that, AFAIK, these schemes require special lines between you and whatever you want to connect to (otherwise you have no way of keeping the quanta you send in the right states). Perfect for, say, communication between a satellite and a ground station (presuming you can figure out how to get the quanta there without getting messed up by solar radiation or whatever), or between CIA and NSA headquarters, or whatever, but it will not be useful, say, over an CAT5 lines.
And even if someone figures out how to send the data through normal lines without messing it up (which doesn't seem too likely, but anyway...), you'd need special hardware to examine the quanta as they come in and decode them. That isn't going to make it too popular: hell, virtually nobody buys those Ethernet cards with 3DES built in, and those can interoperate with software versions easily.
They cite quantum money as a potential example (an idea developed in the 1970s)
Personally, I'd be happy with Chaum's anonymous digital cash. Now if only the stuff wasn't patented.
I am afraid "NOBODY MOVE !" isn't quite enough.
If someone drops the 5-atoms computer, it then should be "NOBODY BREATH !"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...does the thought of microsoft 2020 running on a series of atoms fill me with fear and dread. Discuss.