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Microsoft's Quantum Mechanics

New submitter catchblue22 writes MIT Technology Review has an excellent article summarizing the current state of quantum computing. It focuses on the efforts of Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs to build stable qubits over the past few years. "In 2012, physicists in the Netherlands announced a discovery in particle physics that started chatter about a Nobel Prize. Inside a tiny rod of semiconductor crystal chilled cooler than outer space, they had caught the first glimpse of a strange particle called the Majorana fermion, finally confirming a prediction made in 1937. It was an advance seemingly unrelated to the challenges of selling office productivity software or competing with Amazon in cloud computing, but Craig Mundie, then heading Microsoft's technology and research strategy, was delighted. The abstruse discovery — partly underwritten by Microsoft — was crucial to a project at the company aimed at making it possible to build immensely powerful computers that crunch data using quantum physics. "It was a pivotal moment," says Mundie. "This research was guiding us toward a way of realizing one of these systems."

24 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Universal Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    If through quantum computing Microsoft is able to implement Windows search indexing in all Universes simultaneously, time will slow to the point where we can go faster than light.

  2. Re:Quantum Computing - 5 Billion parallel BSODs by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 1

    That does seem to be the minimum entropy quantum state.

  3. Re:Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's actually quite the opposite. Microsoft has been funding basic quantum computing research via Microsoft Station Q for quite a while. These are mostly theorists, but they also fund some experimentalists, who work on the type of physics they are interested in. Google only recently purchased a box, about which D-wave claims it is a quantum computer.

  4. Sounds cool by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1

    Microsoft is in for a hoax. The 'Majorana fermion' --let's reveal it here and now-- might as well have been called the
    'Marihuana fermion '. Do I need to explain further? Looks like for the time being they'll be using Notepad for their data crunching.>/p

  5. MS qubits by drewsup · · Score: 5, Funny

    The chair is both thrown/not thrown at the same time, only the Balmer super computer can tell.

    1. Re:MS qubits by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 1

      But Balmer is no longer in a superposition. Satya Nadella got that job!

  6. its all about cracking AES by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    its all about cracking AES

    1. Re:its all about cracking AES by Teresita · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's all about closing the analog hole in DRM. Music will be delivered by a smooth Shroedinger wave evolution unless you record it to a cassette tape (analog) or Audacity (digital), which will collapse the wavefunction and kill the music. RIAA is pitching in to aid the research.

  7. Re:Quantum Computing - 5 Billion parallel BSODs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Looks like you will need to update your Qubit Synchronizer Unit buddy, but it'll cost ya.

  8. Re:Yep by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a big difference between buying a box and funding the research as Microsoft has done.

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    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  9. Pretty much flat out wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Modded up, but essentially completely wrong considering this is research on types of generic quantum computers, something even D-Wave themselves admit to not doing, and has been going on for years.

  10. Re:Quantum Computing - 5 Billion parallel BSODs by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

    640 qbits ought to be enough for anyone.

    (sorry, sorry, I won't let it happen again.)

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  11. Limitations of D-Wave's Computer by catchblue22 · · Score: 2

    I thought the article had a fairly succinct criticism of D-Wave's computer:

    Since 2009, Google has been testing a machine marketed by the startup D-Wave Systems as the world’s first commercial quantum computer, and in 2013 it bought a version of the machine that has 512 qubits. But those qubits are hard-wired into a circuit for a particular algorithm, limiting the range of problems they can work on. If successful, this approach would create the quantum-computing equivalent of a pair of pliers—a useful tool suited to only some tasks. The conventional approach being pursued by Microsoft offers a fully programmable computer—the equivalent of a full toolbox. And besides, independent researchers have been unable to confirm that D-Wave’s machine truly functions as a quantum computer. Google recently started its own hardware lab to try to create a version of the technology that delivers.

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    This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
  12. Possible Observation of Marjorana Fermions by DrLudicrous · · Score: 1

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... This came out earlier this month. See http://www.sci-news.com/physic... for a summary.

  13. Re:Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I know it is hard when you make an ass of yourself publicly with a wrong statement, but you only make it worse with idiotic comebacks like this. Simple fact, google did no research, they bought a box, a box that doesn't really even do quantum computing, Microsoft funded and did the actual research to produce it.

  14. Re:Quantum Computing - 5 Billion parallel BSODs by michelcolman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Microsoft does have a lot of experience with the principles of quantum mechanics. Users of their software are constantly struggling with the uncertainty principle and can often make a system collapse merely by observing it.

  15. Not particle physics by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

    Microsoft does have a lot of experience with the principles of quantum mechanics.

    Joking aside I'd estimate it as about as much experience as the GP has with particle physics i.e. close to none. Particle physics is concerned with fundamental particles not with condensed matter states that might behave consistently with a theoretical prediction of how a Majorana fermion would behave. The fact that they dress this up as particle physics is rather sad: condensed matter physics is just as interesting!

    1. Re:Not particle physics by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

      Actually, more! Remember! Mo' matter -> mo fun!

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      That is all.
  16. Microsoft also has a new quantum programming langu by master_p · · Score: 1

    It is called 'QBasic'.

  17. Re:Quantum Computing - 5 Billion parallel BSODs by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Systemd already has quantum core dumps and the logs are in a state of superposition. If you try to look at them they disappear!

  18. Re:I love Microsoft by RaceProUK · · Score: 1

    The rest of the time, it's just one mediocre release of Windows and Office after another.

    Yet without them, MS wouldn't have the money to do the research ;)

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    No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
  19. Re:Quantum Computing - 5 Billion parallel BSODs by ReallyShortNameLengt · · Score: 1

    I use Windows 7 and the last time my computer "crashed", it was probably because I accidentally coded an infinite loop and I had to reset. That was months ago.

  20. Obligatory User Friendly by TeknoHog · · Score: 1
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    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  21. Riiiiiight. by OhSoLaMeow · · Score: 1


    What's a qubit?
    <Bill Cosby Voice Off>

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    They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.