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World's First Programmable Quantum Photonic Chip
MrSeb writes "A team of engineering geniuses from the University of Bristol, England has developed the world's first re-programmable, multi-purpose quantum photonic computer chip that relies on quantum entanglement to perform calculations. With multiple waveguide channels (made from standard silicon dioxide), and eight electrodes, the silicon chip is capable of repeatedly entangling photons. Depending on how the electrodes are programmed, different quantum states can be produced. The end result is two qubits that can be used to perform quantum computing. Most importantly, though, unlike existing quantum photonic setups which require apparatus the size of a 'large dining table,' this new chip is tiny: just 70mm (2.7 inches) by 3mm."
sweet. i want 40-50 thousand made, and strewn on my bed. i would sleep like a baby.
WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
but can you link it to the inverted phase-induced sub-space harmonic protocol analyzer to initiate a modulated tachyon pulse?
For those who are unaware why qubits are so powerful: the computing power provided by qubits scales exponentially if compared to bits used in ordinary computing. For example if you had 20 qubits, that would be like doing simultaneous calculations on processor with internal register size of 1048576 bits. Roughly. That's orders of magnitude more than modern CPUs, which have about dozen of 64 bit registers.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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It's like those string things and dark matter stuff that scientists (of the five-assed monkey sort) thought up... only better! I bet there is absolutely nothing that a quantum computer made with string-theory particles and dark matter can't do.
made from standard silicon dioxide
Isn't that just standard sand?
The trick is finding the dongle.
I assume this is the same group (how many quantum computer groups are there likely to be in Bristol?) that did the whole "lets run Shors algorithm on a silicon etched chip" a couple years ago. So the new news right now is ... Or is this a re-reporting of that historical event, or another paper about that historical work? I'm just trying to figure out the whole timeline thing here.
Hey /. editors, the recent interviews have been very interesting and all that, I'm just thinking interviewing the quantum group in Bristol would be even more interesting...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Just think what would be possible if the megalomaniacs weren't hogging all the money.
It takes hours to sort them out afterwards.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
a beowulf cluster of these...
Had to go there, this is /. afterall...
Hire me...
Unfortunately, after you program it you no longer know where it is.
Help me out.
This would have happened sooner or later, and I am assuming it happened. Quantum computer are here to stay.
Question is, what this means to general community of engineers and software developers ?
I am perfectly aware that we don't have Hardware that is capable of supporting the work of this chip (RAM and HD don't make sense). Maybe in another 15 years.
Does it mean complete shift of computing paradigm ?
Instead of 100 servers, we have just small black-box in a backroom ?
What will happened to all the engineers who created silicon chips ?
What all this means for programmers ?
Sounds delicious.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Things will change, certainly. But it'll still take a long time before a small box replaces 100 servers.
Engineers creating silicon chips should start looking into the workings of quantum chips and prepare to shift their career towards making those.
For programmers, not much will change, except that some things that used to take a long time are now fast.
paranormally hilarious.
Read radical news here
Does it run Linux yet?
how many quantum computer groups are there likely to be in Bristol?
You can either know where they are, or how many there are - but not both.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
For programmers, not much will change, except that some things that used to take a long time are now fast.
Like Java!
If what you say is true, this is truly bad news for cryptography. Algorithms like AES owe their security largely to the fact that brute-forcing all of the keys is generally impractical; with a 256 qubit machine, AES 256 would be cracked in *a single clock cycle*.
If they can do this with two qubits, why not 4? Why not 8, or 128, or 512?
In the same way the WWII cipher designers probably had a hard time imagining that in 40 years there would exist a machine which could crack their ciphers in real time, the designers of block ciphers like DES and AES probably had a difficult time imagining that their ciphers would be insecure in mere decades. DES took 30 years before brute force became practical; will AES survive even 20?
It was just 20 years from the invention of the transistor to the first 32 bit computer. How long will it be before a machine with more computing power than in all of recorded history can be built on something the size of a postage stamp, for a few dollars?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"(RAM and HD don't make sense)" Why?
The computing part does indeed act on every combination your register can have at the same time. An exponential speedup here, that part is right. What is missing on your post is that reading the result is kind of hard. We only know how to get usefull data from a few kinds of calculation, and we don't know if it is possible to get anything usefull from the general case.
The good news is that if we ever discover a way to read the result of a general computation (if it is possible), we'd have discovered a nondeterministic computer. And forget about P ?= NP.
Rethinking email
...the processing power of silicon? at what point in the future would it be feasible to switch?
Quantum computers are not "here" in any meaningful sense. Nobody ever has demonstrated a meaningful larger-numbers quantum computation (say, with numbers > 1000). At the moment, the there is no proof these will even work. It is still entirely feasible that the theory is wrong and large quantum computers are not possible or not useful. Even some tiny deviations from the current theory could cause that. Remember the results have to be physically measured and the input has to be physically put in. Both operations with huge, huge errors when compares to the precision classical computers achieve.
Then, even if meaningful sizes can be built (which is entirely unclear at this time) they are not effective or efficient for most problems.
Example: For breaking ciphers like AES, you get a square root on the key size, i.e. breaking AES-256 becomes as difficult as breaking AES-128 (both by brute force). Breaking AES-128 by brute force without quantum computers is quite infeasible in this universe. Breaking AES-256 by brute-force with quantum computers is quite infeasible in this universe as well.
Forget about any large data-set problems as well. Unlike classical computers, you cannot break problems down for quantum computers. You always have to solve the whole thing in one go, or you lose the advantages.
Bottom line: This is not a revolution, even if it turns out not to be bogus in the first place.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think he made it up. I am not making up (but could be completely wrong) that coincidentally the difficulty of preventing decoherence scales exponentially. And that is the primary limiter to # of qubits and performance, more or less correct?
This is why I more or less will ignore quantum computing unless they can get the number of qubits up enough to be useful.
Wake me when scientists make a 2048-qubit computer. The Xbox 1 public key and I have a score to settle.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
I am OP,
you so you mean there is no way to write "//" programs for Quantum processors ?
heck, I'll settle for snake, I'm an easy game consumer to please
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
let sqrt(x) = x/2
oh wait, i think you got something wrong there.
log2(sqrt(x)) = log2(x)/2
(by key size, he meant the magnitude of the key, not the number of bits in the key)
Nothing happens to engineers. They just design quantum chips instead, at worst (but most likely: a mix of quantum and conventional computers is still required). Most likely it will still be decades yet before most even need to care.
Nothing happens to programmers. A handful of library designers will work out the interesting bits. The rest will continue building applications on top of the libraries as usual.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
"At the moment, the there is no proof these will even work. It is still entirely feasible that the theory is wrong and large quantum computers are not possible or not useful."
If quantum theory is wrong, then nobody will care about quantum computers anyway in comparison. That's a much bigger deal. Finding the Higgs boson is nothing compared to disproving quantum mechanics. Even small errors in quantum mechanics would spark a complete revolution in physics, and would almost certainly be the biggest physics result of this century.
To be honest this is the current case. With most engineering jobs you have a shelf like of about 15 years before what you learned in university starts to look pretty damn dated. So you either move into management, or stay as current as possible.
Years ago, if someone had told me I might actually die by having my heart vaporized, in situ, by a T-101, I would have laughed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite)
Not so funny anymore.
Star Trek called. They want their technobabble back.
Quantum computation is a pipe dream because it is more than exponentially difficult to assemble the qubits. It's just a fact. Let's live with it and move on to things that actually have some promise.
How can I be sure the chip is there, without cracking the case?
Before mathematical capability was baked into the main processor cores, motherboards used to have mathematical co-processors, which could handle the advanced math in a computer. Even if a quantum chip cannot compare with a classical chip's calculation performance at this time, just how feasible would it be to include a quantum co-processor on a classical motherboard for quantum calculations? Would the two combined provide any benefit that either by itself could not?
The Penguin Producer
Wake me up when I can order a dozen from Digikey.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Quantum theory doesn't have to be wrong for quantum computers to be impossible. We know that quantum effects are only present microscopic and not macroscopic systems (with some few, very particular exceptions like crystals, plasma etc). It is plausible that there are yet unknown consequences of the standard QM model that would prohibit quantum effects in sufficiently complex systems, thus "forbidding" quantum computers without making quantum mechanics wrong. I for one hope there are not.
OK, what if this universe is just a simulation, running on a huge (comparatively) quantum computer. Now what if it was such a wicked simulation, that some beings within it, became more than just simulations but rather self aware. What if they started poking around at the fabric of the universe (being a simulation), and start to see some of the underpinning of that quantum computer. So they build quantum computers. Eventually in an effort to discover the answers to their questions, they try to model a universe on a huge quantum computer, including all variables such as human beings... Now make time relative (which we already know), and then calculate the odds that at any point in time, the chances of reality actually being real, or just a stimulation.
Anyway I just thought I would prepare you for the implications of this technological terror you are about to unleash upon reality!
but does it run Crysis?
Indeed. I should have said "square root of the key-space" instead to be clear. So half the bits, i.e. square root of the number of possible keys.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. Say, for example you get a random (in practice) unavoidable measurement error that increases in some unpleasant fashion with the number of entangled qbits. I.e. the calculation could still be done, but the results could not be read with the required precision. That would leave the theory intact, but would kill cipher-breaking and many other applications. For this to happen, it could be enough that building a quantum-state reader for larger entangled sets (remember, you have to read them all at once to get the result) gets exponentially more difficult with size. Or you need to do a calibration each time that is just as complex. This would mean you can calculate fast, but have to invest too much in preparation.
So one possibility is that quantum computers do not scale in any meaningful way. Looking at how many qbits that can entangle and then compute on today and how many they could entangle and compute on 10 years ago, certainly points in that direction.
An analogy from ordinary computing would be that you can, for example, compute everything in constant time (well, really logarithmic time, even if you use hashing, but with a very large base to the logarithm). You just have to build a table of all possible inputs and results beforehand. That kills the advantages in most, but not all applications. For example, attacks on large sets of encrypted passwords with rainbow-tables use this approach. A rainbow-table, once it is calculated, is quite a lot faster than a quantum computer for the same problem. However building one for, say, AES-128, is quite impossible, but only due to fundamental practical limitations.
Personally, I do not mind either way, but I think that there is a reason it is so difficult to lift any quantum effects to macroscopic scale. My impression is that quantum theory is more suited to describe the convoluted minds of the physicists involved than anything real. Maybe they just build this complex theory because they can. Would not be the first time either.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.