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Google Demonstrates Quantum Computer Image Search
An anonymous reader sends along this quote from New Scientist:
"Google's web services may be considered cutting edge, but they run in warehouses filled with conventional computers. Now the search giant has revealed it is investigating the use of quantum computers to run its next generation of faster applications. Writing on Google's research blog this week, Hartmut Neven, head of its image recognition team, reveals that the Californian firm has for three years been quietly developing a quantum computer that can identify particular objects in a database of stills or video (PDF). Google has been doing this, Neven says, with D-Wave, a Canadian firm that has developed an on-chip array of quantum bits — or qubits — encoded in magnetically coupled superconducting loops."
http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/04/11/map-of-all-google-data-center-locations/
"Google secrecy
Google has made it difficult both to find out where they keep their data centers and how many they have. One big reason for this is that almost all IP addresses that Google uses (and there are a lot of them) are listed to their Mountain View, California address, so just looking at IP addresses (with IP WHOIS or IP-to-location databases) won’t help you figure out where their data centers are or how many they have.
In addition to this, Google usually seeks permits for their data center projects using companies (LLCs) that don’t mention Google at all, for example Lapis LLC in North Carolina and Tetra LLC in Iowa.
Since Google tends to be quite secretive about their data centers in general, the information we have presented here most likely isn’t 100% complete"
This is my sig.
... for three years been quietly developing a quantum computer that can identify particular objects in a database of stills or video
I call foul - they're changing the results by observing it!
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
I trust Google not to do anything unbelievably stupid (a bit silly perhaps, but nothing too absurd) but thinking that D-Wave can make a quantum computer is a very, very bad idea. Now it sounds like Google has been working on the algorithm side and I suspect that they're doing good work. The trouble is that D-Wave is doing the hardware. This is a company that has yet to demonstrate any success whatsoever.
They frequently release press updates saying that they have added more bits to the machine but they have never shown it to work for even a small number of bits. The physicists who developed the idea of an adiabatic quantum computer say that D-Wave seems to have misinterpreted their theory to make unrealistic claims and the whole thing is regarded as a bit of a joke in the physics community.
That said, developing the algorithms is a worthwhile thing to do so Google may not be relying on D-Wave to justify their research. I hope not. D-Wave may actually be on to something big that they haven't revealed to the scientific community, but probably not.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Google SSL: Search for SSL keys, kindly recovered by Google using quantum computers.
Will faux "quantum computing" become the next over-hyped marketing "strategy" of numerous vendors, much like "cloud computing" has become? Will we be subjected to endless presentations, advertisements, adverblogs, promotions and webcasts about how fantastic it is, even though it doesn't deliver on any of its promises?
I sure as fuck hope not. It's difficult enough already at my company just getting a simple web server set up. We spend more time fighting off idiot managers who insist we just use "the cloud" and the server will just magically happen.
The problem with D-Wave’s approach is that it is not clear how well it can scale. Their adiabatic strategy involves starting in the ground state of one physical system, transforming it into another system very slowly ( “adiabatically” == very slowly), and then hoping that they stay in the ground state all the way to the end of the procedure; if they succeed in this, then they can read out the new state and they have the answer that they want.
The problem is that this only works as long as it is hard for the system to bump itself up into an excited state. However, as you attack larger and larger problems, the “energy gap” between the ground state and the first excited state shrinks exponentially with the size of the problem, greatly increasing the probability that you won’t end up with the right answer at the end of the computation.
In order to get around this problem, you need to do two things. First, you need to cool the system down so that its temperature is less than the energy gap. However, D-Wave’s cooling system does not accomplish this --- their temperature is too high. In fact, they freely admit that their temperature is larger than the energy gap, it’s just that they are gambling that in practice they can get away with it.
Second, you need to run the transformation very slowly --- at a speed that is roughly proportionate to the size of the energy gap. This might also turn out to case problems for D-Wave as they start scaling up their system to attack useful problems. Furthermore, although they have demonstrated a case where their computer shows a speedup over classical algorithms, this should be taken with a great of salt because as I understand it they basically applied their algorithm in a case where conditions favored it. (Mind you, that isn’t in itself a bad thing --- it is good to understand the conditions under which an existing quantum computer can ever beat an existing classical computer; given the infancy status of the field, I amazed that this can be done at all!)
So in short: no, D-Wave is not a scam, but they are taking a gamble that certain theoretical problems will not bite them in practice, and most QC researches tend to believe that they will lose this gamble even though we hope that they will win it.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Test User: OK, so what you're saying is that if I search for lolcats using Google's quantum image search, it will give me an array of lolcat images to choose from, but until I open the image we won't know if the lolcat is funny or not funny? That makes sense.
Google Scientist: Actually, before you look at the image the lolcat is in a state of superposition. Before your look at the photo it can be both funny AND not funny. By the act of you observing the photo it settles into one of those two states.
Test user: So there's a 50/50 chance of the exact same photo being funny or not funny?
Google Scientist: Essentially yes. Well, unless you go by the "many worlds" model, which states that if you look at the picture, you become entangled with the lolcat, so that the observation of the humor of the lolcat, and the actual humor of the lolcat are joined together. There will exist a universe where you find the image funny, and a universe where you find the image not funny, but these two universes cannot inform each other of these two different states.
Test User: I think I understand.
Google Scientist: Go ahead, click on one of the images from the search.
Test User: Now, you're sure nothing bad will happen? No black holes will open up or anything?
Google Scientist (amused): Yes, I'm absolutely sure.
Test User: OK, I'll try this one.
(The user clicks the image.)
Test User: OH NOES! (faints.)
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!