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."

Comments

computing power scales exponentially

[Janek Kozicki]

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.

Re:computing power scales exponentially

[hweimer]

Oh, we already have a quantum version of Moore's law. However, the time constant for doubling is on the order of six years and not 18 months.

Re:computing power scales exponentially

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's false. Quantum computing offers polynomial time algorithms for a very small set of problems for which classically only exponential time algorithms are known, particularly, instances of the hidden subgroup problem (including integer factorization in the form of Shor's algorithm). More generally, Grover's algorithm gives some speedup to general NP problems, but not exponential. As I understand it, you would need a rather large quantum computer before it would actually faster than existing classical computers.

Entangling photons is a bad idea.

[ross.w]

It takes hours to sort them out afterwards.

Re:Bristol group: uncertainty

[petes_PoV]

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.