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Molecular Photography
med dev writes "An article at New Scientist discusses the latest in quantum computing - 1000 bits stored in the electron spins of a single polymer molecule. Add in a recent release of the how-to for the complete quantum computer, qubits that work, and it may not be much longer before Google is running on a server the size of a sugar cube."
it may not be much longer before Google is running on a server the size of a sugar cube
"Hey Johnny, where did the new $100,000 server go?"
"I don't know... I had it right here on the table!"
"Oh shit! I put it in my coffee! That's why it tasted kind of funny."
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Hello, Slashdot user. My name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instrument.
I've done NMR, it takes ages. Preparing the sample takes about 30 minutes. Running the NMR takes between 1 and 20 minutes depending on what you're measuring. Analysing the results depends on how good you are.
I can't see google using this any time soon.
If they could just fit 24 more on there, it would be a much easier number to work with...
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
"One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
It all depends on your perspective. Give it a while and we'll see what the true ramifications are.
-Mark
Sure, biochemists might need the massively paralell processing power to do molecular folding analysis, but regular joe bloes will, IMHO, be very comfortable with quad 2GHz HT Pentium 4s... for a decade at least.
I feel there will be a rift like there was in the old days when mainframe systems were few and expensive, and the rest were smaller systems.
Frankly, Quantum doesn't titillate me as much as a nice new nVidida chip at this point.
The other thing is that massively powerfull paralel processing isn't always a Good Thing. It's just A Thing. Take for example early Pentium Pros which had 16 stage pipelines. Nice in concept, but unless you use it properly, it's not really usefull. Many problems aren't massively parallel... The brain for example, is massively parallel, but not in the sense that many mean: all of your brain isn't adding two million 4 bit integers at the same time. It's doing millions of different tasks...
Sunday night... must sleep... must shadap.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Just because you don't see the possibilities inherent in something does not mean that the thing has no value or is not relevant.
Besides, with the way things are moving, I can imagine the possibility of a computer that needs no clumsy interface cables, no removable media, and such... We're moving closer to being able to make systems that truly have no moving parts.
After all, there was a time when computers were built around the size and heat of vacuum tubes. Someday, probably not all that long, the interface mechanisms, storage devices and display systems we use today will be as quaint as a vacuum-tube driven computer programmed by hard-wiring it seems to us now.
Apparently quantum computers "borrow" exponential scratch space from some Hilbert space during computation. As far as I know, there's no one living in Hilbert spaces that it could upset, but I could be wrong. So at worst it's a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
Moreover, the peculiarities that make quantum computing interesting (e.g. the ability to factorize in polynomial time) also make it completely inappropriate for mundane tasks. So please stop the "google in a cube" shit.
The Raven
To everyone who has so far commented: so what?
My mother was born in 1947. The transistor was also invented in 1947, by Shockley. 55 years later, I got her a new computer for Christmas.
What will I see when I turn 55? I can't wait to find out.
Synchrotrons are used for x ray crystalography. they can produce X-ray photons at a wide range of frequencies and you can carefully select the photons you want using an x-ray monochromator.
The X-rays will not tell you anything about the nuclei of the molecules you are looking at, as the photons go through the electrons in the crystalised protein they will make an interference pattern, and from that you can calculate the shape of the electron cloud around the molecule.
Note that this gives you no infomation on the quantum state of the nuclei, which is what this quantum computer needs to know.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance molecular analyisis works in a similar way to Magnetic Resonance Imaging, just on a smaller scale.
for more information click here
You are incorrect. Classical computers can search an indexed database in log(n) time. Grover's algorithm allows quantum searches to be much faster, perhaps even in constant time. Search engines could benefit immensely from quantum computing.
Lots of information can be found on Lov Grover's quantum search algorithm. Do a search for it on Google. Dr. Dobb's even analyzed the quantum source code for the algorithm. Pretty cool stuff.
For instance, it mentions that they used photons to carry information between ions. That's all well and good, but remember, working with single photons isn't all that easy to begin with, and that pesky Heisenberg guy keps getting in the way. Stray particles remain a problem. (Silicon computing has copper to carry electrons -- what do you to with individual photons?) Furthermore, it does not address the larger problem of decoherence, wherein the state of a quantum computation is lost after a short and unpredictable amount of time.
Really, what would be better is some great leap in quantum error correction or some quantum computer that does not rely on nuclear magnetic resonance. (NMR can only scale to seven or eight qubits before becoming unusable, at which point quantum computers are rather pointless...)