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U of Michigan creates first Quantum Microchip
zigziggityzoo writes "According to this article, The University of Michigan has created the first Quantum Microchip, which could eventually lead to the first instance of Quantum Computing ever." The bad news? We won't be seeing any notebooks or handhelds with quantum chips in the near future.
It is not a first post until someone reads it as a first post
I'm gonna need a spec.
Mox
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these bady boys!
(Had to, sorry.)
The bad news? We won't be seeing any notebooks or handhelds with quantum chips in the near future.
Yeah, right. Let me introduce myself, my name is Richard and I am Vice Peon, Assistant to the High Junior Acolyte In Charge of Dustbins of the Holy Order of 8th Day Advanced Micro Devicers. Once we were few in numbers, our faith challenged at every turn by the Church of Intel. Scoffed at, most cruelly as rank copyists without an innovation to our name. After years of wandering the wilderness between iterations our faith was rewarded most gloriously! Speak not of Quantum Notbooks and Handhelds being a thing of dreams, for we know the mighty AMD will deliver.
You'll see, you just watch! Ya betcha! Wrist devices, wearable quantum rings. Any second now. Yeah...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's one small chip for man, one Quantum leap for mankind.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
as you might be able to know where the computer is but not what it is doing or what it is doing but not where it is at the same time...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Expect this story to be dupped again. This time, it will be the fault of their new CPU, not Slashdot.
Finally, a dupe excuse for Slashdot!
Life is not for the lazy.
1: As a proof of concept, it's a good start. I was always rather unsure how practical all this QC stuff actually was, as although the benefits look great, the technology seems to be incredibly complex.
2: It's a nice slap in the face for the various people who still doubt the validity of quantum theory itself. The fact that this is possible shows it's definately on the right lines.
the dupe could be the first story!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From TFA:
Researchers believe quantum systems will be much more efficient at rock-solid cryptography and mass database searches than running the latest version of Doom.
Any particular reason why? I mean, bits are bits, are they not? Or is this saying a game architechture couldn't take advantage of a qubit?
The Power of Quantum Computers is a good insight into just why this is a good system for factorization, and thus, breaking the stuffing out of encryption systems.
"For example, an up-spin can represent a one, or a down-spin can represent a zero -- or the qubit can occupy both states simultaneously"
This way windows can be working and not working at the same time.
oh, wait.....
I'm GLAD it won't happen soon! Imagine someone tapping into your SSL sessions with his quantum chip!
Besides, i'm much more interested in optical or spin-based chips with nearly zero-power-consumption than a quantum entanglement chip.
They have no idea what this will lead to. Remember research 50 years ago? Huge, vacuum tubes, hundreds of calculations a second (maybe). They thought the world would have maybe 5-10 computers. Who envisioned Doom, or the Internet?
Same way with quantum computing. Right now we have very primitive experimental technology and think a few researchers might eventually benefit. I'd like to see what we're doing in 50-100 years.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
When (if) a quantum computer can eventually be made, it'll probably have more then enough power to crack many of the currently used encryption schemes. Such a big jump in computing ability (from that little I've read about quantum computing and my roommates ranting, it's that powerful) will definately present a problem for security schemes. Things may get interesting then......
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
I'm sure they're doing some great work... but my chemistry tells me something a little funny about this quote:
"The cadmium atom that has lost an electron becomes a negatively charged ion, which can then be controlled with an electrical field," said Daniel Stick, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan's physics department who participated in the work.
Excuse me ? Generally when atoms LOSE electrons, they become POSITIVE. Quantum wierdness indeed.
No fair! You've changed the outcome by measuring it!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From TFA, emphasis added:
"The cadmium atom that has lost an electron becomes a negatively charged ion, which can then be controlled with an electrical field," said Daniel Stick, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan's physics department who participated in the work.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but basic high school chemistry says that an atom that loses an electron has an overall positive charge, which makes it a positively charged ion or a cation...
I'm not sure I want this guy designing my computer. =)
"Bother," said Pooh, as lightning knocked out hi%#&(F*@NO CARRIER
If it runs Windows does that mean it can be both in a crashed state and an uncrashed state?
for the next Duke Nukem Forever.
Actually for some people there are reasons to move beyond 64 bits besides address space. There are a lot of processors that are used in DSP that work on >64 bit intergers. However for a general purpose machine proccessing of large intergers is probably better off in specialised units like altivec.
As a side note current 64 bit processors only actually can access about 40-45 bits of address space since all those extra pins cost money and are unlikely to be used.
At the end of every (?) episode of Quantum Leap, Sam (Scott Bakula) (and that holographic dude, once or twice) would say "Oh, boy" once he jumped into a new body and realized his new predicament.
:-(
Can't believe the mods missed it.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
"I think there is a quantum world market for maybe five computers."
My Systems
Actually, I'd say that in 1946 (yes, 60 years ago) Murray Leinster essentially predicted the internet. Although he didn't predict how it worked, he certainly predicted computers in the home searching centralized data repositories. Here's an excerpt from "A Logic Named Joe."
Not too far off the mark for 1946.
Support SETI@home
His point is, even if you need over 17 GBs of RAM, it'd be far more efficient to just split up that RAM among multiple 64-bit processors. I mean, by the time we have 17 exabytes of RAM, they're will probably 1000 core 64-bit processors. ;)
Software is like sex. It's better when it's free. -Linus Torvalds
We have a name for this: 16 exabytes!
The wikipedia article on 128 bit processing points out that it's probably not efficient for a single 128 bit processor to have over 17 billion gig of ram to itself anyway -- it'd probably make far more sense to split the ram up between several 64 bit processors instead.
So how would you address ram on a different processor? Ok, this is so far into the future, that anyones guess is valid, but a 128 bit address space isn't too silly.
Assuming we use some form of nano-storage with an atom per bit, 2^64 bytes needs storage space measured in cubic mm. 2^128 bytes needs storage space measured in cubic km.
2^256 bytes needs storage space measured in cubic deci-parsecs. This is still conceivable for a science fiction scenario, and would be the preferred memory addressing size for a dyson-sphere (or cluster of dyson-spheres, with still a bit of room for virtual memory). A 512 bit address space starts to get pretty unrealistic though, at least if you need it for memory addressing reasons...
But I digress. The point is that it's still very conceivable that future advances in nanotechnology will bring cheap nanoscale-memory, where a 64-bit address-space is still too small. A 128-bit address space ought to be enough for everybody though (at least on a conceivable time-scale).
Don't we already have this? I mean 64kB RAM and an old slow 68k processor. Shouldn't take up much space on a die... Probably much lesss than a grain of rice would!
I seem to recall that an article was posted on /. a few months ago about this as found here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/ 07/1241216
And here is the company's webpage: http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page5.html
See! Proof that Quantum-Optical computing has already been done!
Ok, so maybe this would be the first non-vaporware quantum chip...
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Keep in mind a 64 bit processor can address 17 billion gig of ram. I think that should be "Gub." 1 billion bytes is a gigabyte, but 2^30 bytes is more properly referred to as a gubibyte; and last time I checked ram was measured in base 2 rather than the easier to remember SI units. If they choose to use the indeterminate spin as a "2" they may need to add a third prefix for base 3. He, He, He. This is still news for nerds, right?
Cheap power supply?
Synergy is your friend
It's enigmatic because while these vectors are eigenfunctions of the Schroedinger equation, meaning that they represent a definite state, the sum of these two vectors is NOT an eigenfunction. It is weird that a particle simply walks around with a state not corresponding to any definite eigenstate. It is also weird that when you try to catch the particle in the act, the particles state collapses to that of one of the eigenstates of which it is in the superposition, with probability given by taken the scalar product with the eigenstate in question. This means that when not being measured, particles evolve according to the (deterministic) Schroedinger equation, while when the particles are measured they (randomly) perform a quantum leap into just one eigenstate, and then continue on their Schroedinger evolution.
This is
a. Counterintuitive. How can these particles walk around with indefinite states?
b. Disturbing. How does measurement make them choose a state; what is the privilidged status of measurement in the universe; does it have a true state?
c. Mathematically sophisticated. The details of quantum mechanics require infinite-dimensional Hilbert space theory, much of which has been developed during the 20th century. Things like the spectral theorem are mathematically very difficult and are necessary for quantum mechanics. It is not true that people learn what a Hilbert space is in the first year of undergraduate mathematics. Hey, even people in their senior year of college might not know what it is, let alone how to use its properties.
Don't say quantum mechanics is simple. It is one of the strangest theories ever developed by science, and should be thrown out altogether as ridiculous, if it weren't for the fact that it explains observations very well.
In a related story, after being told that U Mich now has quantum microchips working, Steve Jobs was heard saying, "Crap! FUCK! We just finished switching to Intel chips, and now THIS happens?! Now we're going to have to, I mean this will make us, I mean... DAMMIT! DAMN. IT. Stupid fucking processors -- we should've just stayed with m68k. I mean, what's the point?"
quantum systems will be much more efficient at rock-solid cryptography and mass database searches than running the latest version of Doom.
Not even quantum computing is fast enough for Doom 3, eh?
A quick search on Google would suggests that there is increasing interest in this field. How aboutIBM , as well as a start up company called D-Wave Systems located in Vancouver, for a start.
As for my two cents, don't bet on an up-and-comer quantum-computer-making-business "knock them [the processor giants] them of their perch". The article (in addition to previous stories) doesn't predict a quantum computer that you'll be able to buy off the shelf and use on your desktop. Perhaps a look at the current prospects for implementations of quantum computers, and a miniscule amount of common sense would convince you of this unliklihood.
What's the big deal? Q*berts have been sround since 1982!