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Australian Researchers Devise Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer
schliz writes "Researchers have devised a theoretical quantum computer that could function even if one in four qubits were missing. The design is claimed to be the first that tolerates both qubit loss and decoherance to this extent. It performs calculations by measuring, rather than manipulating qubits, so there are fewer points of failure."
Oh sure, it's fault tolerant... until you look at it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Researchers have devised a theoretical quantum computer that could function even if one in four qubits were missing.
I think that this quote is apropos: In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. Yogi Berra
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
3 bad Uncertainty Principle jokes already. I predict at least 50 more. Dupes count (obviously).
I just pooped your party.
Announcer: "...Number 3, in a quantum finish!"
Farnsworth: "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
How about "quantum MITMs"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I recall hearing a talk about how to do fault tolerant quantum computing already six years ago. The main points I remember from the talk was that there was a theoretical limit to how much redundancy you could introduce as if you could reconstruct from half the qubits then you could clone the state, which is known to be impossible. I don't remember how large the gap was between the upper and lower bounds were, but they proved that at a certain error rate their redundant construction would improve the error rate, and could be applied multiple times to get even better error rates.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
There is a difference between tolerating faults and ignoring them.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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Arxiv link
That quotation has been ascribed to several famous people. It's likely not from Yogi Berra. Kindly don't perpetuate urban legends. Thanks. - Yogi Berri
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The problem here is the one fault it's not tolerant of is that it isn't even close to being a practical quantum computer, and so lands squarely in that magic world with all the high efficiency solar cells, nanotube based ultracaps, and the myriad of medical discoveries, of which only a very, very few actually make it to market -- the rest are dead ends, for whatever reason. I am actually beginning to find these announcements a little depressing. Either there's something really wrong with our "get it to market" system, or there's an awful lot of bullcrap out there. Neither answer is good.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Surely it can be both correct and incorrect at the same time? =)
And what am I, chopped liver?
coding is life
"The design is claimed to be the first that tolerates both qubit loss and decoherance to this extent."
Can we check on the cat now?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
What's in the picnic basket?
-Yogi Bear
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My iPod will sync before I plug it in?
a new implementation of the "she'll be right, mate!" algorithm, or the "no wucken furries!" paradigm?
Noooahhhhh. Nooaahhh...
This is the Lord, Noahhhhh.
riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Ice Cream has no bones.
This post proves it. :-p
There's only something wrong with the widespread perception that things do not exist unless they are in the mass market. Some things end up in satellites or esoteric expensive bits of electronics and never end up at Walmart, normal journalists never hear of it and science journalists already reported the initial work a decade ago so see it as a finished story. You very rarely get bits of journalism like the radio interview of the inventor of the laser while he's having his shopping scanned at a supermarket (done a few years ago on Australia's ABC Science Show).
Then of course there are the early announcements blown up in hype by University P.R. people that need to make a lot of noise to ensure the money keeps rolling in. That's where you get announcements as utterly stupid as the single layer micrometre thick bullet proof spandex costume from an idiot employed by MIT that should have run the article past his material scientists before he put it out (the reality was a lot of thin layers with as little contact between them as possible to make it difficult as possible for a shock wave to make it through the material - a bulky as normal but lighter weight bullet proof material).
G.day!
So it's true - Microsoft fucks you over with Windows OS.
we won't know until we observe it =)
Invention is a scientific process.
Innovation is an economic process.
I was referring more to the continual river of hope about finished items - quantum computers, low cost solar cells (that one is particularly troublesome), like that. Still waiting for a decent household robot, still waiting for memristors, still waiting for a real flying car, still waiting for "portable nuclear reactors", also fusion reactors, still waiting for a decent OLED monitor, still waiting for a consumer 3D printer, still waiting for cures for... well, a whole lotta stuff, really.
These things are hard. The articles, though, seem more and more breathless to me, less attached to reality and more about just painting a picture they can be cheery about.
For instance, I'm glad they've got fault-tolerance at the qbit level worked out in at least one way. Wahoo. Now, the important question to me is, when will they have a quantum computer? 10 years? 25? 100? When will it become relevant to my life? Sure, I know scientific work is ongoing, and that it is fundamental, but a whole lot of it is dead end, too.
And on a vaguely related note, I wish like heck they'd get the space elevator thing worked out. Now there is something that would be a paradigm-shifter. Imagine, finally, real access to space. We could build a *real* space station, something that would support excursions into the rest of the solar system, not to mention science, medicine, huge amounts of solar power... yeah, that'd be number one on my list, all right. Sigh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A $5 thing with solar cells, capacitors and an LED that lights up the garden at night isn't good enough for you? We already have cheap solar cells and there's other non-silicon options that both look impressive and can get more than the optical range that are likely to bring it down even more. The really expensive high efficiency stuff is getting used with mirrors to cover more area and bring down the dollars per watt. What won't happen is photovoltaics pushing ahead of thermal power at very large scales - double the area and you only get double the power but with thermal doubling the size eventually gives better returns than that.
You could probably make a 3d printer yourself with lego mindstorms, a computer, a laser with a bit of power and a tub of polyester (I think) resin. I saw one more than ten years ago driven by a machine with a pentium 100 or similar, and it was good enough to construct models of a childs deformed skull to plan for reconstructive surgury. I don't know if you could get many people to buy it since it's a fairly specialised thing and slow.
I'm waiting for OLED too, or for the easily adjustable and cheap variable brightness window coating someone I know was working on a decade ago (humidity gave it trouble), or scramjets like the one I saw in 1987 - but it takes time to get all the bugs out sometime.
As for medicine, there's a lot of progress but still a long way to go because we have a lot to learn about how the body works.
Not even close. I want a system I can put on my roof and then cease relying on, and paying for, constant supply of hugely expensive power from the grid. The energy is there and it is wasted. Knowing that is frustrating. But PV systems are VERY expensive and the ROI is very slow because they're not very efficient, either... not to mention that the batteries have short lives and are a significant part of the cost; and that the PV cells themselves also tend to degrade over time. The point is to save money so I can do other things with it. As long as it's so expensive, it's not practical. I've got 30x50+10x20 worth of roof. You know how much solar energy hits that? It's astonishing. And I can't use it. Frustrating!
Nah, I don't want one that makes resin models, I want one that makes goods like radios, televisions, solar cells, computers, lunch... you get the idea. We're not even close.
You said it. It's still very much an art. Maybe in a century or two, but I'll be long dead. Oh well. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We live completely off the grid. Solar powered with diesel backup and gel battery storage. The system has been running for eight years and the generator has run a total of 900 hours over that time (mostly just monthly/weekly battery maintenance cycles). We have an array of 24 2V 600mah Sonnenschein batteries and not one of them has shown any measurable variation in performance over eight years. We are still some time from break even(BE) on initial investment but as I watch supplied energy costs rising BE gets closer daily. Although, if we take into account the initial government subsidy received on purchase BE on our personal outlay is only a few years away.
IMHO people holding off due to cost of initial investment, BE being a long wait, etcetera are doing themselves a disservice. Once BE becomes the major dot point of the sales pitch then the queues will be long, unobtainium rarer and more expensive, no more government subsidies, and increased sales taxes on alternate energy systems will be required to help bail out those poor bottom line affected and suffering power companies.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Your system is very nice. I need about 10kw here that is operable from -40 to rooftop temps on 115f days (I don't know exactly what that is, except I know it's horrible), can withstand 90 mph winds or better and baseball sized hail -- (NE Montana has some pretty rough weather.) And it has to go on the roof without ripping it off in high winds - the available land here is in shadow. It's kind of a tough situation, and there are lots of extra costs because of the environmental considerations, but the main problem is the cost of PV... it's just too much right up front. Every time I see an article about "low cost PV" I grit my teeth. I can build the inverter myself - I'm an EE - and that would both save a lot of money and give me something I can 100% maintain myself - but the PV might as well be magic for all I can do about it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I should have included a caveat about living in a solar friendly environment. 115F is 46C - it get's that hot here and believe me it sucks. We will get weeks of over 40C in summer. Although this year the weather has been completely fscked up/strange. I suspect that baseball sized hail would badly damage/destroy our panels. I have been toying with the idea of putting some old garage roll-a-doors in place so that the panels could be covered in an extreme event.
Don't take this the wrong way as I am not attacking your engineering skills but(OMG here's the but) to home build an inverter like ours would be quite a feat and if you could pull it off you are a talented person. Here is a link to the inverter manual if you are interested in seeing what the unit itself does/manages.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.