Slashdot Mirror
Opening Quantum Computing To the Public
director_mr writes "Tom's Hardware is running a story with an interesting description of a 28-qubit quantum computer that was developed by D-Wave Systems. They intend to open up use of their quantum computer to the public. It is particularly good at pattern recognition, it operates at 10 milliKelvin, and it is shielded to limit electromagnetic interference to one nanotesla in three dimensions across the whole chip. Could this be the first successful commercial quantum computer?"
Links forgotten: This and this one.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
No, their device is *NOT* a universal quantum computer. So far as I know, no reputable quantum physicist not in their employ has been allowed to examine what they actually do. Examples of performing calculations impractical on a classical computer are not available as far as I know.
They are something of a joke among the QC people I know. While people acknowledge that their device may be possible of doing some interesting things, everything they do is acting like they have something to hide.
Can someone post a link that describes the benefits of a quantum architecture and how software can be written to take advantage of them?
And by "benefits", I don't mean hype.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm
^The big one.
The wikipedia article is not bad, though it is fairly technical.
A very small number of algorithms are known for universal quantum computers (which the D-wave device does not claim to be) that are asymptotically faster than any known algorithm for classical computers.
The most widely known of these is Shor's factoring algorithm. Mostly it would be useful for breaking public key cryptography. The others are: Grovers search algorithm which can give a small speed boost to any classical algorithm that involves enumerating all possibilities and checking some property and quantum simulation: simulating the behavior of systems of many particles where quantum effects are important.
In the past 10 years, considerable progress has been made, but nobody still has a good handle on when scalable universal quantum computing might be a reality, though it no longer looks impossible--only very hard. D-wave does not claim their device is universal. In particular they don't say they can do factoring. They claim to be able to efficiently do quantum simulation and also traveling salesman type optimization problems. Evidence of them actually solving any hard problems is not widely available.
D-Wave has provided neither proof nor convincing evidence that they have, or are capable of building a quantum computer. There are several theoretical limitations that experts remain skeptical have been overcome. Their demonstrations have been suspicious and not open for peer review. In sum, I will believe it when I see it.
See some skepticism here:
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=306
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=291
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?s=d-wave
I don't want any physicists saying "you forgot the Hademard gate etc."
I think you meant "Hadamard gate".
-- Any Physicist
(Much easier to google for the wikipedia article with that spelling.)
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.