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IBM Will Sell 50-Qubit Universal Quantum Computer In the Next Few Years (arstechnica.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the they-are-coming dept.

Months after laying the groundwork for offerings in emerging tech categories such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, IBM sees quantum computers as a big, if nascent, business opportunity. From a report on ArsTechnica: IBM will build and sell commercial 50-qubit universal quantum computers, dubbed IBM Q, "in the next few years." No word on pricing just yet, but I wouldn't expect much change from $15 million -- the cost of a non-universal D-Wave quantum computer. In other news, IBM has also opened up an API (sample code available on Github) that gives developers easier access to the five-qubit quantum computer currently connected to the IBM cloud. Later in the year, IBM will release a full SDK, further simplifying the process of building quantum software. You can't actually do much useful computation with five qubits, mind you, but fortunately IBM also has news there: the company's quantum simulator can now simulate up to 20 qubits. The idea is that developers should start thinking about potential 20-qubit quantum scenarios now, so they're ready to be deployed when IBM builds the actual hardware.

20 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm. by olsmeister · · Score: 5, Funny

    I really want to buy one but at the same time I don't.

    1. Re:Hmmm. by tomhath · · Score: 2

      I'd ask if you want one right now, but you'd probably change your mind

    2. Re:Hmmm. by billybob2001 · · Score: 2

      You appear to be in a super position.

    3. Re:Hmmm. by slew · · Score: 2

      I really want to buy one but at the same time I don't.

      Maybe if you don't look at your credit card bill, you can stay in a superposition of 1/2 bought, 1/2 resisted for a while, but as soon as you look, your world will collapse... Or maybe the decision is entangled with your spouse in which case your spouse can spontaneously collapse that decision for you...

    4. Re:Hmmm. by monkeyzoo · · Score: 2

      Yikes! It's starting to happen fast.
      In terms of being prudent about encryption, what could one start to do now to prepare for the coming quantum computers?

      I'm not certain, but I believe the elliptic curve algorithms are supposed to be quantum computer resistant, right?
      Specifically, what kind solutions would enable these kinds of algorithms in tools like TrueCrypt (for local encryption) and PGP (for message exchange)?
      I have large amounts of data stored in both formats in cloud backups that I would like to make sure doesn't get snapshotted and trivially decrypted in a few years.

  2. Re:"Will" by Shimbo · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think we can reasonably be sure that IBM will deliver on time; just not necessarily in this universe.

  3. Quantum supremacy tests will come first by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the major issues is the need for actual empirical evidence that quantum computers can do things that classical computers cannot with reasonable time constraints. Right now, the general consensus is that if we understand correctly the laws of physics this should be the case, but there are some people who are very prominent holdouts who are convinced that quantum computing will not scale. Gil Kalai is the most prominent https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/why-quantum-computers-cannot-work-the-movie/. It is likely that before any 50 bit quantum computer we'll have already answered this question. The most likely answer will be using boson sampling systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson_sampling which in their simplest form give information about the behavior of photons when scattered in a simple way. Scott Aaronson and Alex Arkhipov showed that if a classical computer could efficiently duplicate boson sampling with only a small increase in time then some already existing conjectures in classical computational complexity had to be false. (In particular, the polynomial hierarchy would have to collapse and we're generally confident that isn't the case.) Boson sampling is much easier to implement than a universal quantum computer, although no one has any practical use of boson sampling at present.

    All of that said, the "a few years" in the article is critical- it isn't plausible that a 50 qubit universal system will be sold in 5 years. But 10 or 20 years are plausible. It also isn't completely clear how practically useful a 50 qubit system would be. At a few hundred qubits one is clearly in the realm of having direct practical applications, but 50 is sort of in a fuzzy range.

    1. Re:Quantum supremacy tests will come first by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because if I understand quantum theory correctly, it both works, and doesn't. There is no measurement for a half binary state in a binary world of absolute on and off.

      I'm not sure what you mean by "it" here, but pretty much every interpretation of this is wrong. In fact, measurement of quantum superpositions do return specific classical states, with a probability based on the superpositions.

      I think pursuing analogue supercomputers might be a better place to start.

      We have specific theorems about what analogue classical computers can do. See for example http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0196885888900048 and https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0502072. In general, analog computers cannot do error correction and can when used to do optimization get easily stuck in local minima.

      A more reasonable argument would be "We need more money to continue milking this quantum cow that never produces anything."

      Quantum computing is still in its infancy and is best thought of as still in the basic research category. But even given that, there's been massive improvement in the last few years, both in terms of physical implementations (how many entangled qubits one can process) and in terms of understanding the broader theory. One major aspect where both the experimental and theoretical ends have seen major improvement is quantum error correction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction.

  4. Re:FTLOG -WHY SHOULD WE CARE? by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is unlikely that most people will see quantum computers in their day to day lives. But one will see the many improvements that they give. For example, there's strong reasons to think that quantum computers will make doing chemistry simulations easier, resulting in more new interesting things in different contexts, including medicines. For similar reasons, one expects that quantum computers will make it easier to design better classical computers.

  5. But by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

    But does it play Crysis?

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  6. And won't by raymorris · · Score: 3, Funny

    In a secret box IBM has a quantum computer. It' ready to ship. And it's not. They call it Computer Advanced Technology, or CAT.

  7. What are its capabilities? by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What kind of problems can this particular computer solve, within a reasonable time (hours? minutes!) that would take an ordinary PC - or even a massive classic supercomputer - decades, or even millennia, to solve?

    1. Re:What are its capabilities? by quonset · · Score: 2, Informative

      From my perspective, simulations. For example, a simulation showing the motion of water molecules when water is boiled. Not the current version where we have an approximation of the molecules as they are heated, but a simulation where each and every molecule and its motion within the mass is calculated and shown.

      How about tensile or compression strength of solids? Again, instead of an "object" being depicted we could depict how steel is deformed at the molecular level, including how impurities or additives affect its strength.

      Wave motions (who knows, maybe the gun as well), atmospheric currents, ocean currents, stress and sound in a moving car/truck, how sub-atomic particles react to each including calculating the various forces at that level, and the list goes on. I'm not even scratching the surface of how this technology could be used.

      How about real-time holographic images? Someone stands in front of the camera in New York giving their presentation and people around the world can see that person standing in their room as if that person was with them in real life. No elaborate set up at the receiving end, no screens or anything, just a simple projection of the person's image from a single camera (or something similar) which the receiving person can walk around as if it had all dimensions.

      Whatever you can dream up would be the only limitation.

    2. Re:What are its capabilities? by johnsmithperson123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Asymmetric crypto using Diffie-Hellman. It's a problem a quantum computer can solve easily (compared to a classical one at least.) It's a big thing on the horizon in cryptography, and I wouldn't be surprised if state actors already possess the tech, or will soon. Definitely important enough to land a spot on the weapons ban list, at least.

    3. Re:What are its capabilities? by cryptizard · · Score: 2

      Pretty much all of your examples are pure bullshit. Quantum computers are not magic. They are just better at solving some very specific problems compared to classical computers, and as far as I am aware your examples do not fall into any of those categories.

    4. Re:What are its capabilities? by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      Asymmetric crypto using Diffie-Hellman. It's a problem a quantum computer can solve easily (compared to a classical one at least.) It's a big thing on the horizon in cryptography, and I wouldn't be surprised if state actors already possess the tech, or will soon. Definitely important enough to land a spot on the weapons ban list, at least.

      I wouldn't be surprised if state actors are pushing quantum crypto nonsense to scare people into abandoning actually secure systems.

      Thus far nobody knows if scalable quantum computers are even practically possible let alone any clue how to go about creating one.

  8. Re:It uses Python! by nctritech · · Score: 2

    I pasted this into Bash and my computer sprouted limbs, walked out of the room, and kicked my dog square in the balls. The part about this that really has me weirded out is that I don't actually own a dog.

  9. Re:"Will" by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >The article doesn't say who they'll deliver it to.
    >What exactly will it be useful for? Factoring 50-bit numbers? Any ideas?
    >$15 million seems an awful lot of money just for bragging rights. It'd better come in a really pretty box so people can put it in the lobby when they get bored with it.

    If it's a general computer then yes. You could implement Shor's algorithm for factoring, Grover's algorithm for inverting mappings (to find keys). There are a handful of non crypto related algorithms for things like simulated annealing.

    What no quantum computer to date has done and what a 50 bit quantum computer for $15,000,000 will not do is compute anything that can't be computed more cheaply or efficiently on a traditional computer.

    I remain a skeptic that quantum computers can scale up to useful sizes. The rest of the universe wants to bring that low entropy state back into line with the rest of reality and it has succeeded every time so far.

       

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  10. Re:"Will" by David_Hart · · Score: 2

    I expect quantum computing would be like battery improvements: something people continue to complain about being hype, even while at the same time it migrates into their everyday lives without them noticing. I mainly expect that should quantum computing chips make their way into consumer processors, your average programmer would never touch them - but backend system library calls that they make would increasingly use them without the frontend developer ever being aware.

    Given that the quantum computer requires super-cooling, it's highly unlikely that it's going to migrate into our lives any time soon...

    "In order to function as a quantum computer, it has to be super-cooled at all times. The system sits at the bottom of refrigeration system where the temperature is roughly 0.015 degrees above absolute zero."

    http://mashable.com/2016/05/04...

  11. Re:"Will" by jimbo · · Score: 2

    Any CEO worth his salt will find a way to play Solitaire on it.