Slashdot Mirror
Lockheed Martin Purchases First Commercial Quantum Computer
Panaflex writes "D-Wave systems announced general availability for its 128 qubit adiabatic quantum machine just two weeks ago, and reports of its first sale to Lockheed Martin have come out."
The D-Wave Systems site has a rather informative collection of quantum computing papers.
...but I'm uncertain if I'll buy one. Maybe I should check with my cat.
So, can this thing crack all non-quantum encryption, then? I seem to remember reading about how that would only require 32 qubits or so. And whether it can or can't, if commercial offerings have come this far, how long has the NSA had a version that can crack all encryption?
I attempted to get a basic understand of quantum computing from Wikipedia, and maybe find out how a quibit measured up to a traditional bit, and what adibatic meant.
Whelp...
I will never make fun of another old person who is unable to grasp the concepts of computing and computer interface that I use every day.
Spellcheckers don't usually help with grammar.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I found the D-Wave white papers very hard to understand, but I'm sure it's because of a poor translation from the original Vulcan to (sortof) English.
A traditional digital computer is pretty hellish to program too if you take away all the props -- you have to find a set of bit values for the memory such this immense consrtructrion of hundreds of millions of gates, clocks, latches, etc. will evolve to give your answer in a reasonably ti,me.
Adiabatic quantum computing is somewhat different from "regular" quantum computing. Also, places like Slashdot don't get every minor update to the state of the art. Might have something to do with all the people who say, "wake me up when there's a commercially-available version of this." Well, here's your commercially-available version of this.
I'm simultaneously for and against this.
Schrödinger? Is that you?
The basic idea is to enter "42" and see what happens.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
think instead, that solving the hamiltonian is equivalent to (or potentially "harder than") solving the original problem, so that you can translate the original problem into a hamiltonian problem. it doesn't mean that you know the answer of either, but you do know that the solution of the hamiltonian will match up to a solution of the original problem. this is the spirit of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_(complexity)
very, very roughly, think of it like rewriting java, for example, as c. you may not know what the particular code actually DOES in an overall sense, or what it will output, but you can nevertheless rewrite it sort of mechanically (like a compiler would) if you know both languages. furthermore, it's feasible that translating the code is easier than devising the algorithm from scratch. this is basically a reduction. if you can "easily" rewrite any java code as c code, that means java is "reducible" to c. the theory of computation essentially deals with reductions, not of code, but of entire problem classes, which is where P, NP and all that come from.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I guess I am just have to wait for the Apple Quantum Computer User Experience
Me too -- in particular I'm looking forward to the quantum MWI version of FaceTime, which connects you to various alternate-universe versions of yourself, so you can compare notes and see who made the better decisions.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.