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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.
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5 Atoms? We won't see them on the shelve's at all - unless your eyesight's a lot better than mine...
PigPog.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
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
Dropping contact lenses is bad enough. Imagine dropping one of these!!!
"NOBODY MOVE!!!!!"
Bob.