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.

Comments

5 Atoms?

[pigpogm]

5 Atoms? We won't see them on the shelve's at all - unless your eyesight's a lot better than mine...

Predictions

[pigpogm]

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.

Language for quantum computers

[AlpineR]

While searching for quantum physics simulations, I came across

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

the classically trained are doomed

[Sebastopol]

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.)


---

Re:5 Atoms?

[bob_jordan]

Dropping contact lenses is bad enough. Imagine dropping one of these!!!

"NOBODY MOVE!!!!!"

Bob.