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Quantum Computer Possible From Silicon Fab

Posted by timothy on from the quintiddlydidillion dept.

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.'"

4 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Re:uh-oh by Myco · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Uh, hate to burst the bubble of your little security apocalypse, but encryption schemes which will baffle quantum computers have been worked out for a while now, well in advance of the hardware's availability. Of course, for all I know it may *take* a quantum computer to implement these schemes (otherwise it seems like we'd just use them now), which would create two security classes of users, one of whom could penetrate the other's security at will. Yikes.

    --
    My deviantArt site
  2. Paging Vernor Vinge . . . by Floyd+Turbo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OK, let me see if I've got this straight:

    Quantum computing is just around the corner. Blind people can get optical implants directly into their brains, allowing them to recover sight. (Not perfect today, but just wait 'til Moore's law gets hold of this hardware.) It may be possible to build a space elevator within the next 15-20 years. And so on, and so on.

    The singularity is suddenly looking a lot less theoretical.

    1. Re:Paging Vernor Vinge . . . by damien_kane · · Score: 2, Insightful

      but then you won't need to work.

      No, it's when the gadgets can do everything you can't do that you will no longer need to work.
      Until then you still need to work to make money to pay someone else to do those things...

  3. Re:So, what can a million qubits calculate? by dillon_rinker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wow, you mean the presence of popular books means it's not academically rigorous? Guess it's never been done for relativity...or quantum mechanics...or DNA...or cosmology...or nuclear physics...or orbital mechanics...or...

    Obviously, my point is that most interesting and/or obviously practical areas of science have been popularized. This says nothing about the rigor of the field of study. I'd point out that popularization is NECESSARY, You've seen "Contact," right? Jodie Foster plays the 'good' scientist who doesn't play politics and exepcts EVERYONE to automatically feel and believe the way she does; the movie is a fantasy, so everything turns out OK, but in real life, the super-conducting super-collider gets cancelled because some senators didn't understand what they were funding. Some better popularization (ie education of the non-scientific, non-technical public - that's 90% of the voters, you know) could have made the difference.