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IBM Gives Everyone Access To Its Five-Qubit Quantum Computer (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader writes: IBM said on Wednesday that it's giving everyone access to one of its quantum computing processors, which can be used to crunch large amounts of data. Anyone can apply through IBM Research's website to test the processor, however, IBM will determine how much access people will have to the processor depending on their technology background -- specifically how knowledgeable they are about quantum technology. With the project being "broadly accessible," IBM hopes more people will be interested in the technology, said Jerry Chow, manager of IBM's experimental quantum computing group. Users can interact with the quantum processor through the Internet, even though the chip is stored at IBM's research center in Yorktown Heights, New York, in a complex refrigeration system that keeps the chip cooled near absolute zero.
And IBM will also give no one access to its Five-Qubit Quantum Computer?
Five qubits? According to understanding of quantum computing, which I got by reading two seconds of various Wired articles before the paywall kicked in, that means that this amazing machine is capable of storing every value between 0 and 31 simultaneously!
Users can interact with thing through the Internet, even though the thing is stored at location.
Wow! What an amazing application of the Internet!
WATSON = 5 letters
IBM quantum computer = 5 qubits
Coincidence? I think NOT!
Guess you haven't bought a mainframe lately. That market is doing extremely well.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The ones I've seen any detail on behave like a finite state machine, except that the state retains all possible positions from the full range of inputs as modified to that point of the algorithm and a 50% chance of entering an error flow that results in an incorrect answer. Fortunately, the incorrect answer is not consistent, so if the algorithm does have a consistent correct answer it will be the most common answer after multiple executions.
Once your sequence of parallel finite state analyses gives you a strong assertion of a correct answer, it is relatively trivial to test that answer with even a naive classical algorithm.
In theory, a quantum-inclusive machine can solve many problems in 2O(n) time (as in, two separate O(n) sub-algorithms) that would take a classical system O(n*n). How perfectly it scales to reducing O(n!), O(x^n) and similar is beyond my current familiarity.
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of computing in this country. The IBM 360 was the mainframe to rent. Then the other guy came out with a three-qubit computer. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the IBM 370. That's thirty-two bits and an a DASD storage array. For databases. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to four qubits. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, renting thirty-two bits and a tape drive. High-speed controller channels or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five qubits.
Sure, we could go to four qubits next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Let's make a thicker substrate and call it the Qubit3SuperTurbo. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the quantum computing game. Did anyone get fired for buying IBM? Fuck, no. No man ever got fired for buying IBM.
What part of this don't you understand? If two qubits is good, and three qubits is better, obviously five qubits would make us the best fucking quantum computer that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the computing game by clinging to the two-qubits industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, five qubits is the biggest chance of all.