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Hybrid Technology Could Bring 'Quantum Information Systems'
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Purdue say the merging of plasmonics and nanophotonics is promising the emergence of new 'quantum information systems' far more powerful than today's computers. Plasmons are quasiparticles that combine electrons and photons. And by using them in place of the simple electrons of today's computers, they could overcome limitations in the operational speed of conventional integrated circuits. The technology hinges on using single photons for switching and routing in computers that would harness the exotic principles of quantum mechanics.'"
Optical computer - yes there were articles about these in Scientific American in the early 80s - anyone got the reference? Even older I am sure. And holography was going to replace magnetic memory of all sorts. I think there is an article about flying cars in that issue. Oh and one day we'd all have portable phones as small as Star Trek communicators...
Quantum C. You never know what the variables may hold.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The whole point in quantum computing is that it is not random but completely deterministic through the wavefunction. Only the measurements of quantum states are "random" and this is because you are forcing the system to take one of a few discrete values. Through multiple measurements, we can pin down the expectation (average) value of the observable which should be constant for constant inputs on a certain calculation.
Or very well may never get there. And even if we get there, it is by far not that much batter to what we have now. Quite a few hard problems stay hard, even with working quantum computers. And yes, I have talked to an expert in the field.
The "almost a scam" is claiming great potential n order to get grant money. This is just dishonest.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Forget the whole computer, just a nice fat light pipe between the CPU and RAM, maybe a second between the PCIe and CPU but but great, thanks loads. Nowadays it seems like no matter how much RAM you stuff keeping the CPU and GPU fed ends up being the problem. SSDs for the OS can kill a lot of the HDD problem but in the end it all comes down to feeding the chips and a nice light pipe between the chips and RAM would probably make today's PCs feel like a 386 trying to run Win98.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Actually for most algorithms you don't need statistics, because you can easily check if your solution is the correct one (e.g. prime factorization: Just multiply the numbers you got, and see if the original number results). If it is, you're ready, if not, you run the program again. The trick is to get into a state where the correct answer is very likely to occur. Or at least significantly more likely than by pure guessing.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Okay, let's try to simplify it even more. Quantum computers have gates just like ordinary computers. There's a difference, though: instead of acting only on a single value, they act on a whole bundle of them at once (that's the probability distribution). You can in effect calculate a function on many inputs at once, but you can't reach behind the curtain and pick all the answers (or any answer you want) from the result. When you do ask the computer to reveal an answer, you get a random answer from the entire bundle according to its probability. The clever part about quantum algorithm design is then to first alter the input bundle in the way you want, then selectively amplify the answer that you're interested in so you'll get it very often and get other answers rarely if at all.
More or less. I Am Not A Quantum Physicist, grain of salt, etcetera.