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Qcloud Puts Quantum Chip In the Cloud For Coders To Experiment
hypnosec writes "Quantum computers are currently available in very few labs, usually bankrolled by major organizations like Google and NASA. However, a new project called 'Qcloud' aims to break those barriers by making quantum computing available to everyone. The University of Bristol announced the launch of Qcloud today at the British Science Festival 2013, with the goal of making quantum computing resources available to researchers across the globe. Claimed to be the first open-access system of its kind, the quantum chip is located at the Center for Quantum Photonics at the University of Bristol. Researchers can remotely access the processor over the internet for their computational needs. Those looking to test their ideas on the processor would be required to first practice and hone their skills using an online simulator. The university has made tutorials available to researchers so they can learn how to tune the processor and change its output as required. Once they are confident in their skills, researchers can ask for permission to access the real quantum photonic chip."
That and you never know for sure if your post was first!
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Oblig: yes and no.
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I spent 5 minutes wading through news articles to finally find the free to access simulator: http://cnotmz.appspot.com/
For the same reason it's wasn't sufficient to simulate your computer programs on paper back in the early days of computing...the simulation is FAR from fast enough.
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From the 20th of September 2013 you will also be able to access to the worldâ(TM)s first open-access quantum processor
so its not a cloud, or even a cluster. you'll need to register for an account to use the processor and as such id expect the service is going to look more like the superdome 9000 access i had in college than anything close to cloud. FIFO or RR scheduling will be used to execute jobs simulated for time as a component of their priority level. This is actually the way every supercomputer works, we're just extending the academic luxury of such a machine to the general public.
TL;DR: fuck your cloud, get off my lawn.
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I'm neither a physicist nor a computer scientist, but if you can "hone [your] skills" using the simulator, why isn't it sufficient to have a fast enough simulation of a quantum system using a classical computer, and solve your problems on the simulator?
The reason is scalability. Even with the best currently existing methods, the computational complexity of simulating quantum systems on classical computers grows exponentially with the number of qubits. Quantum computers, being quantum systems themselves, do not have this exponential scaling. With just two qubits, the exponential penalty for classical simulation is rather small (and the classical simulation will be much faster), so the only reason why you would want to build an actual experiment is to make proof-of-principle tests of the technology. With a few tens of qubits, the exponential growth becomes relevant, and classical simulation becomes impractical. Right now, the world record for the full simulation of quantum systems on classical computers is 42 qubits, and the world record for quantum computing stands at 14 qubits. So, while the real experiments still have some way to go before they catch up with what we can do with classical computers, it's not crazy to think that this will happen within the next decade.
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