Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

First Quantum Byte Created

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the future-arrives dept.

gila_monster writes "Juice Enews Daily is reporting that the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Innsbruck in Austria has created an entanglement of eight quantum particles, yielding a quantum byte or 'qubyte,' or eight qubits. The formal paper was published in the December 1 issue of Nature. A qubyte with eight ions provides a computing matrix of 65536 mostly independent elements. No word in the article about whether they were able to actually use the qubyte for computing."

4 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. no word in the article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No word in the article about whether they were able to actually use the qubyte for computing

    I think we can be sure that if somebody had unlocked the secret of quantum computing there's a chance they'd say so at some point.

    1. Re:no word in the article by David+Hume · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I think we can be sure that if somebody had unlocked the secret of quantum computing there's a chance they'd say so at some point.
      Unless that someone worked for the National Security Agency.
      --
      Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
  2. Re:Que? by marol · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't you mean 4^x?

  3. Re:Whats a Qbit? by centie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A qubit is a superposition of two states, a 1 and a 0 if you like. So it containes some 0 and some 1, or written as a|0> + b|1>, where a and b describe "how much" (more accuratly the probability) of 0 and 1 in the state. a and b are in general complex numbers. One qubit has then 2d hilbert space, 2 quibits 4d and 3 quibts 8d etc. So 8 qubits has a 256 dimensional space for its complex amplitudes (a and b etc) to inhabit.