Slashdot Mirror
Web Quantum Computer Simulator
Heraklit writes "As reported on Heise News, the Frauenhofer Institute of Computer Architecture and Software Technology has made available the first online quantum computer simulator - it will be simulating up to 31 quantum bits, for testing new advanced quantum algorithms. Behind the scenes, it is a 32 node Athlon 3200 Myrinet Linux Cluster with 56GByte RAM! Now imagine the computing power of a few hundred qubits, if ever constructed..."
The algorithm in psuedo-code:
int qbit[32];
for ( i = 0; i < 32; i++ )
qbit[i] = (rand() >>30) & 0x01;
Nice rack, seriously. Clean, uncluttered.
Since power and probably complexity to program increases exponentially.
It's more convenient than Web interface and has no arbitrary limits...it's a quantum computing module for Perl! There's also libquantum for C users, and QCF for Matlabbers.
If I did, they would collapse into a single state and be useless as quantum computers.
A "PC" that just scrapes Longhorn's requirements.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
The only question left is, can a Quantum Computer Simulator handle the /. effect?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You changed the outcome of the loading time of the page by posting a link to it!
I also reply below your current threshold.
'Now imagine the computing power of a few hundred qubits, if ever constructed...'
A few hundred qubits would be very powerful at factoring numbers and other such specialized algorithms. But as far as linux and other "normal" software goes, a few hundred qubit computer won't be any better than a few hundred bit software.
If that had been a 32 node Itantium cluster, Intel could have boasted of doubled Itantium sales for that quarter.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
and the answer I got was....
I don't know. I don't even know what the fuck I did. Just pushed buttons and two minutes later it told me I was done! THE QUANTUM POWER IS AMAZING!
Casual Games/Downloads
Aren't these the same folks that hold the MP3 encoder patents? If they are the same people I wonder when they'll patent the quantum computing algorithms?
The scaling is not 1:1, so while it takes 32 Athlon processors with 56GB of ram, the processing power of 31 qbits is not that of the 32-processor cluster. This is an emulator, so the actual 31-qbit probably isn't quite as powerful as the hardware required to accurately mathematically model it. So while the computing power of a few hundred real qbits might be impressive, the computing power required to simulate those few hundred qbits would be extremely impressive.
-F
Sorry, if you just imagine playing Duke Nukem Forever, you collapse it into a wave function and the game never gets finished.
Or something. Look, a monkey!
They've taken out all the fun of the "imagine a beowulf cluster of these..." by putting it in the article itself...DARN YOU SLASHDOT! DARN YOU TO HECK!
Until somebody went and looked at it.
(Or does that need 42 Q-bits?)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
strictnein writes:
/.
the answer I got was.... I don't know. I don't even know what the fuck I did. Just pushed buttons and two minutes later it told me I was done! THE QUANTUM POWER IS AMAZING!
Profane MuthaFucka writes:
Isn't Qbit that dude that jumps all over the pile of blocks?
maxbang writes:
You changed the outcome of the loading time of the page by posting a link to it!
If anyone can explain quantum computing to you and me, pal, it's patently obvious they don't read
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
... is develop a quantum algorithm that can handle a decent amount of slashdoters!
Now my head hurts and I still don't understand it, or any practical applications.
Please someone start an amusing rant about how [insert OS here] would do this much better. Need entertainment to make head stop hurting. Or beer.
LETS DECOMPOSE & ENJOY ASSEMBLING
I thought Noah built an ark that was 300 qbits long, 50 qbits wide, and 30 qbits in height...
"It's the Lord, Noah"/"Riiiiiight...."-B.Cosby
From 0 to drunk in $20
What I can explain without too much trouble is that the cluster is merely emulating the abilities of a quantum computer. A quantum computer, conversely, would be incapable of matching the performance of, say, seti@home on all of those machines. Emulation is taxing on any system - just ask the people who are using PearPC on their brand spankin' new computers only to get sub-G3 performance out of OS X.
For those of you who don't know: The biggest problem with quantum computing is that you can never extract all the information you compute. So you can process y=f(x) for 2^31 values of x simultaneously, but when you go to read y from the computer, you just get one solution, and what's worse, you don't even know which value of X it corresponds to!
Using Shor's factoring algorythm, however, you can extract one of the factors of a large number without knowing all the other factors. That would be useful for public key encryption. I wouldn't worry about your PGP key just yet though. 7 q-bit computers are incredibly difficult to make. The process used to make the 7-bit QC does not scale to larger numbers easily. 2048 bit computers are way beyond our technical skills.
On a side-note, I wonder if each computer simulates a q-bit (with one responsible for management). It would be the most obvious way to run the simulation, but may or may not be the fastest. There would need to be a lot of cross-communication since all the q-bits are entangled in any interesting quantum computation.
Basically this stuff can't be done in polynomial time. For all quantum algorithms you start by setting a bunch of qubits into a uniform superposition of states (e.g. if you do this to 8 qubits and then measure them, you will be equally likely to get any number between 0 and 255 as your result). Then you can use these qubits as input into a function and effectively calculate the value of that function over every possible value of the input. The trouble is that you don't get 2^n different values of the function, you get a superposition of 2^n states. When you measure the output, you'll only find out one of the values of the function. So in order to get a working quantum algorithm, you have to manipulate the quantum state until you have a high probability of measuring the state you want.
Quantum computing has other complexities. Every function must output as many qubits as it has for input. It's also impossible to make a copy of a qubit without altering the original qubit. This means that in any quantum programming langauge, all funciton parameters must be passed by reference. All functions must be invertible. This can be generally accomplished by leaving the inputs unaltered and writing the output to some scratch qubits which are set to 0 beforehand.
If you want to learn more about quantum algorithms, I suggest you read up on Grover's search algorithm. It's much simpler than many quantum algorithms and it's also proven very adaptible to other situations.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
References please? The fundamental problem with teleportation is the impossibility of simultaneouly (or even a reasonable appoximation thereof) introducing kilograms of matter to kilograms of other specially entangled matter, and sending the still-necessary "decoding" data stream to the reciever.
By my count that's at least three impossible things. In order from least impossible to most:
- Sending the data stream anywhere in any reasonable amount of time. (It's that last clause that's a real killer, but this might be possible to some degree.)
- Introducing the teleportee to the entangled matter... imagine trying to touch every atom in your body simultaneously. You can't just smoosh the teleportee into the matter, it won't work. Oh, and no fair killing the teleportee to do it.
- Creating kilograms of entangled matter in the first place, and managing to keep it from reacting to its environment so it stays entangled... for entire seconds, days, weeks, years. Uh-uh, nope, not in this universe.
I don't see how QC helps with any of these.(It's funny how something like this brings out all the physics fanboys who, in their ignorance of physics bounded only by Star Trek, honestly think we're making some sort of progress towards teleportation and the other impossibilities. Instead, real physics just keeps stacking up the reasons why these things are impossible, and the possibilities are receding, not advancing. Why do I have the sneaking suspicion WarriorPoet42's "several physicists" are just "some other teenager I found on a web board somewhere who likes to dazzle other fanboys with his command of physics^W Star Trek buzz-words"?)
Noah constructed a supercomputer called "The Ark" that was composed of 300 qubits by 50 qubits by 30 qubits, or 450,000 cubic qubits.
Hmmm... sounds like the basis for some cheesy sci-fi - kind of like a matrix, but to protect minds from some psycho-viral plague.
Inconceivable!
> (which is, of course, impossible).
"If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Millway's, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe?"
'nuff said.
This is not a sig
One unintended side effect of the QC has been that answers started to show up before questions were put in. Researchers are investigating, but suspect they already know the answer...