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First 'Quantum Computer Chips' Demonstrated

holy_calamity writes "The first quantum computer chips have been made by two US groups, New Scientist reports. Both NIST and Yale have demonstrated chips where information was transferred between two superconducting qubits using a 'quantum bus'. The bus is made from a cavity that traps a single microwave photon as a standing wave — the NIST group also managed to use the bus to store data from one qubit for a short time. 'After encoding information in one qubit, they transferred it into the cavity for 10 nanoseconds before transferring it to the other qubit. Yale's chip used qubits around 1-micron square built on silicon, while NIST used larger 10-square-micron qubits on top of sapphire. In both prototypes, the bus between the qubits was between five and seven millimeters long.'"

40 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. First... Or not by Lectoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    maybe I'm first, maybe I'm not.

    --
    Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
    1. Re:First... Or not by dapyx · · Score: 3, Funny

      In some of the universes, you are the first, in other universes you are not.

      --
      I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
  2. Argh! by Cleon · · Score: 2, Funny

    Must...Not...Imagine....Beowulf...Cluster....

    --
    Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
    1. Re:Argh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What if you put a cat inside that Beowulf cluster you're not imagining?

    2. Re:Argh! by Tyler+Durden · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If I understand it correctly, a Quantum Computer already is a Beowulf Cluster of possibilities.

      --
      Happy people make bad consumers.
    3. Re:Argh! by tinkertim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is it things like this never have pictures? I wanna see pictures. Its no fun to read about things that you don't (quite) understand unless you can ooh and ahh at pictures while you pretend to understand. Then you can point at your screen and say "See? Its THAT piece. That's what makes it work. Its the, err.. umm, thing that makes it work!"

    4. Re:Argh! by nschubach · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...or at least a fancy lab with blue under desk lighting and neon plexiglass walls with blacklights. I mean, seriously.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  3. The Universe by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

    Howdy. I don't claim to understand all of this. However, the more I read, the more I am convinced the universe makes no sense. I am waiting for the guy who is dreaming all of this to wake up and for all of us to stop existing.

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:The Universe by gardyloo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      # "And anyone who thinks they can talk about quantum theory without feeling stinky hasn't yet understood the first thing about smell."

      # "If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."

            --Neils Bohr

    2. Re:The Universe by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2, Funny

      the more I am convinced the universe makes no sense

      Congratulations. You're starting to understand. ;)

    3. Re:The Universe by wronzki · · Score: 3, Informative

      "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." - Richard Feynman

    4. Re:The Universe by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think not!! Be careful! When Descartes said that, he suddenly disappeared.
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  4. Shit... by CaptainPatent · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was going to tell you, but I changed the outcome by reading it!

    --
    Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
  5. Sure sounds nice... by darthflo · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... but will it run Linux? (Or will it run and not run Linux at the same time?)

    1. Re:Sure sounds nice... by SomeoneGotMyNick · · Score: 3, Funny

      (Or will it run and not run Linux at the same time?) You mean just like Microsoft Virtual PC?
  6. Neat things about the quantum bus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can't know how many cats wide it is or fast it is until you transfer data over it.

  7. does anyone else worry.. by wtfpgh · · Score: 2

    that stuff like this is the "glue" behind the universe, and someday, some scientist in a lab is going to have an experiment go horribly wrong?

    .. know anybody in Hollywood?

    --
    Every time you ________ in Soviet Russia, kitten kills God!
    1. Re:does anyone else worry.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I work in a physics lab, and a few days ago the unimaginable happened.
      A quantum experiment had gone horribly wrong, going completely out of control and destroying itself in the process.

      The devastation was unimaginable.
      All that was left of the experiment was a crater, almost a nanometre across.
      As soon as we get the electron microscope on it, I'll have more details of what went wrong.

  8. Encryption? by bucky0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Once quantum computers become mainstream, what will we use for encryption? Are there algorithms that are computable by standard computers but are also unbreakable using quantum computers?

    --

    -Bucky
    1. Re:Encryption? by lakiw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, there's always one time pads...

    2. Re:Encryption? by BlowHole666 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think what he was getting at is factoring a number quickly is very slow (np-complete) on todays hardware. With Quantum computers the problem does not take as long just like the NSA and some research groups try and break current encryption with a grid of computers because they just brute force their way past the encryption. The reason your average joe does not do this is because most people can not afford a large grid of computers. Well with quantum computers your average joe may not need a large grid of computers.

      --
      I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
    3. Re:Encryption? by krog · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because, in theory, quantum superposition can be exploited to provide keys of arbitrary length; since each qubit can be 0 and 1 simultaneously, put enough qubits together and you ALWAYS have the right key.

      The quantum chips TFA references are not designed around this principle, so this is all a little unrelated, but there is a reason why people expect widespread quantum computing to bring about the end of the useful life of today's ciphers.

    4. Re:Encryption? by carleton · · Score: 5, Interesting

      To clarify both sides, unless I've missed something in the last couple of years, AES was designed[1] with the possibility of quantum computing in mind and the solution is to use double the bit length you'd otherwise need (which is the same for at least some elliptic curve-based Public Key algorithms but for different algorithmic reasons). Is this still computable by standard computers? Yes. Does it make it harder to use "strong" crypto in limited hardware, a little. Could there be improved algorithms down the road that push it to the point that it takes the same order of time to decrypt on standard computers algorithms knowing the key as it does to decrypt (break) on quantum computers without knowing the key? Possibly (in the sense that I don't know of any proofs showing limits on efficiency gains etc.).

      [1]Designed is probably not the right word, but basically, brute force searching of 128bit symmetric keys is believed to be secure in the sense that using all atoms as non-quantum computers would find it some point after expected heat death of universe. However, quantum computers can (being lazy, start at wikipedia's entry on cryptoanalysis, look for grover algorithm) do a brute force search in quadratic time (so 128bits would take on the order of 2^64 steps which is much more tractable... however, using 256bit AES keys (which would otherwise be overkill for most things) now take on the order of 2^128 steps which again hits that whole heat death thing, unless either a better algorithm comes out or someone comes out with some sort of hyper-quantum-computing idea)

    5. Re:Encryption? by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They'll just increase the key size to the point where it won't be easy for even a quantum computer to decrypt...Since there is no theoretical limit to the size of the key, and the only practical limit is processing power, this is almost trivial.


      If encryption doesn't scale better than decryption, then there is a problem, since then (at best) someone with K times your processing power (for some value of K that is independent of key size) will be able to decrypt your transmission as easily as you encrypt it, no matter how many bits you use for the key.
    6. Re:Encryption? by Rhaban · · Score: 2, Funny

      Because, in theory, quantum superposition can be exploited to provide keys of arbitrary length; since each qubit can be 0 and 1 simultaneously, put enough qubits together and you ALWAYS have the right key.
      But enven if you find the right key with this method, you can't use it because it would change the key the file was encrypted with.
    7. Re:Encryption? by krog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you're referring to the fact that observing the quantum register will destroy its state, you're right. But the part you're not mentioning is that there is a high probability you just observed the right answer. Measure it a few times -- or a few hundred or thousand, hell with it, that part's still O(1) -- and you can poll for the right key.

      If you think that trying to crack the key with which a file was encrypted will re-encode the file with a different key, I can't help you there.

    8. Re:Encryption? by bucky0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Problem with one time pads is that you have to have a way to securely transmit the pad.

      --

      -Bucky
    9. Re:Encryption? by kmac06 · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, this is not correct. While it's true that if you put N qubits together in the correct superposition, you can make a state that is "equally spread out" over all 2^N possibilities, you cannot make the computer "favor" the correct one (at least not in the sense you are implying). Using Shor's algorithm you can factor a number in O((log N)^3), which is an exponential improvement to crack RSA. And yes, I am a physicist working on quantum computing.

  9. Sounds practical... by indigest · · Score: 2, Insightful
    ...until you read this:

    The whole apparatus was cooled to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero to make the circuits superconducting.
    Still stuck at square zero.
    1. Re:Sounds practical... by Nilych · · Score: 2, Funny

      A few thousandths of a degree above square zero. Progress!

  10. Re:Why the need for a buss? by Selfbain · · Score: 3, Informative

    My understanding is quantum entanglement cannot be used to transfer information.

    --
    Well, it has never been successfully tested.
  11. Does reading this post by netglen · · Score: 2, Funny

    change the outcome of the story?

  12. Re:obligatory Bill Cosby quote: by aproposofwhat · · Score: 2

    I've had enuff - I'm going Ohm.

    --
    One swallow does not a fellatrix make
  13. Re:Not the first by imakequbits · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, D-Wave's device is on a chip, but there are others long before that, too. I am not sure what the first solid-state qubit experiment was, but such experiments have been going on since the late 90's. The claim of these experiments is that they demonstrate the first quantum bus on a chip.

  14. Yale group's press release by imakequbits · · Score: 3, Informative

    Readers may find the Yale group's press release interesting.

  15. One time pad is still safe by Maximum+Prophet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The one time pad, where the key length = message length is still safe as long as you never reuse the key. (the "one time" in one time pad.

    As simple proof of this is that for any encrypted text of length N, there exists a key also of length N that will decrypt the etext to any plain text of length N. Therefore there is no way for an attacker to determine if an attempted key is valid or not. There if an attacker were to try every single key of length N, which is possible on some super large future quantum computer, all he will get out is every single decryption of length N, with no way to determine which is correct.

    Suppose the plain text was "attack at dawn" and the etext was "xbdhgfhwteriur". After the attacker used his q-computer he'd have "attack at dawn", "attach at noon" and "attack at fred", along with 64 quintillion other combinations.

    --
    All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
  16. Re:Doesn't make my computer go faster... by benow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, because new things should have existing applications. They're new, they enable new. It might not have applicability now, but it might do when google offloads your search to a qbit coprocessor.

  17. Re:Doesn't make my computer go faster... by Nextraztus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If there are no current real world applications that are programmed for or depend on quantum computers, the proper response is "so what?"
    It's a good thing Tesla didn't feel the same way about A/C electricity.
  18. Re:Whatever you do by Skevin · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm pretty sure the IT department in my office has done this many many times. I keep hearing whispers of pulling out all the "Cat 3" that's been "running behind our walls". What happened to the first two cats? And how did Cat 3 escape? We've hired a group of what looks like construction guys, who must really be specialist exterminators because their job is "get rid of any trace of Cat 3". Hmm, I wonder what my company is trying to hide? I overheard my boss tell them that he wants to replace it with "Cat 5". It must be a very stealthy cat, because it's going to "go into every cubicle and every office"! Those strange exterminators suggested "Cat 6", but my boss rejected the idea, saying the Cat 6's plastic core made it very difficult to work with. Now, while I'm already concerned with the idea of zombie ninja cats prowling the office, I certainly will not stand for *bionic* zombie ninja cats!

    Solomon

    --
    "Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
  19. Re:Why have a bus on a quantum chip? by TexVex · · Score: 2, Informative

    A superposition of states simply means that that the particle has an unknown value for the property being discussed. If you pick any random electron up off the street, its spin along any axis you choose to measure is in a superposition of states such that it might be up or down with equal probability. You can't measure this condition of being in a superposition of states because it is not a property of the electron. Rather, it is a condition of the information that you know about the electron. To use a bad coin flipping analogy, if you flip a coin and cover it before looking, you can say it is in a superposition of states between heads and tails with equal probability of each, not because there is anything special about the coin but because you simply don't know the definite answer.

    Entanglement does not allow you to control anything at all about a distant particle. When particles are entangled, that means that measurements taken on both members of an entangled pair will correlate more often than our current understanding of the universe says should be possible. The measuring is a passive thing -- it gets information about the state of the particle. The correlations imply that somehow the entangled particles are linked over distance, or that the future of the pair of particles was predetermined at the time the entangled particles were created.

    It cannot be exploited for communication because in order to even detect the strange correlations, you have to compare measurements, which requires getting information about those measurements to a common location. Suppose I'm doing an experiment with entangled photon polarization, and Alice is trying to send a message by modulating the angle of her polarizer. At Bob's detector, he's getting a 50% hit/miss with each photon that comes his way, no matter what angle Alice sets her polarizer to, and his measurement results are completely random.In order for Bob to decode the message, he has to know what Alice's measurements were. This is actually why photon entanglement is useful for encryption -- but it ain't gonna let us talk faster than light.

    --
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