Quantum Computer Possible From Silicon Fab

Cash Mitchell writes: "This article from the EE Times says 'Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison claim to have created the world's first successful simulation of a quantum-computer architecture that uses existing silicon fabrication techniques.... With existing fabrication techniques, the team estimates that a million-quantum-dot computer (1,024 x 1,024 array) could be built today and operated in the megahertz range.'"

Comments

For the physics-savvy

[carambola5]

I truly take pride in this discovery... mostly because I attend UW. But I suppose a love of physics helps in that area, too.

Anyways, here's a somewhat technical article regarding the research (PDF).

Oh, and "On Wisconsin!"

Re:Several thousand qubits is enough...

[Uller-RM]

It needs 2n + 1 qubits; you start with a superposition, raise it to a power, then measure the result, collapsing the first superposition into a subset of logarithms. The discrete log step is the clincher: once you know the number has a log, you can just perform a Fourier transform on the superposition of logs, and the rest is all number theory.

And yes, you realistically need a LOT of extra qubits for error-correcting codes.

(Just for completeness, the University of Portland used this text for a 400-level semester course on QC. It's not too bad, although it expects you to be quite fluent in number theory and linear algebra.)