Posted on 02/09/2007 11:28:07 AM PST by US admirer
Twenty years before most scientists expected it, a commercial company has announceda quantum computer that promises to massively speed up searches and optimisation calculations.
D-Wave of British Columbia has promised to demonstrate a quantum computer next Tuesday, that can carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously (in parallel "universes"), thanks to a new technique which rethinks the already-uncanny world of quantum computing. But the academic world is taking a wait-and-see approach.
D-Wave is the world's only "commercial" quantum computing company, backed by more than $20 million of venture capital (there are more commercial ventures in the related field of quantum cryptography). Its stated aim is to eventually produce commercially available quantum computers that can be used online or shipped to computer rooms, where they will solve intractable and expensive problems such as financial optimisation. It has been predicted that quantum computing will make current computer security obsolete, cracking any current cryptography scheme by providing an unlimited amount of simultaneous processing resources. Multiple quantum states exist at the same time, so every quantum bit or "qubit" in such a machine is simultaneously 0 and 1. D-Wave's prototype has only 16 qubits, but systems with hundreds of qubits would be able to process more inputs than there are atoms in the universe.
Scientists in the world's many quantum science departments are looking anxiously at whether the demonstration - linked to a computer museum in Mountain View California, will vindicate their work or cast doubt upon it.
"This is somewhat like claims of cold fusion," said Professor Andrew Steane of Oxford University's Centre for Quantum Computing. "I doubt that this computing method is substantially easier to achieve than any other."
Others are more enthusiastic: "I'll be a bit of a sceptic till I see what they have done," said Professor Seth Lloyd of MIT. "But I'm happy these guys are doing it." Lloyd is one of the scientists who helped develop the "adiabatic" model of quantum computing which D-Wave's system exploits - a method which D-Wave believes will sidestep the problems which have restricted progress in quantum computing so far.
Ziggy, is that you?
That line just hurt my head thinking about...
Or maybe it wont at the same time.
Don't understand it, but it sounds good.
To someone who still has a slide rule in his desk somewhere all I can do is shake my head and smile when I hear the younger generations talking now and the tools they take for granted.
Now this is interesting. I will be very interested in hearing the results.
>POP<
Ouch.
Extremely neat technology. In a few decades, high-qbit-count quantum computers will be as far head of today's machines as a 1GHz wireless notebook is ahead of Eniac.
The cool thing, addressing NP-complete problems, is that rather than sequentially chugging thru all possible solutions to complex problems, a quantum computer can _be_ in all those solutions simultaniously. We currently can't imagine the possibilites.
Porn at the speed of thought.........
A quantum computer can still compute without being turned on, so I don't understand why they bother to make it, since it's already operational?
We'll all need one of these to run the next version of Windows given how big Vista is..
Several months ago I read a book called "A Different Universe" by Robert B. Laughlin, a Nobel laureate in quantum physics. I don't have the book handy (I returned it to the library), but if I recall correctly he basically said that the idea of quantum computing is based on a fundamental misunderstanding and cannot work. We'll know eventually, I suppose.
LOL! That's the first use that you can think of for this?
Marx said the same about capitalism.
"The cool thing, addressing NP-complete problems, is that rather than sequentially chugging thru all possible solutions to complex problems, a quantum computer can _be_ in all those solutions simultaniously. We currently can't imagine the possibilites."
Does this mean secure banking is out the window?!? I don't want to go back to a paper check-book!
and instant punishment for thinking about it LOL
That's how the Infinite Improbability drive was invented ;-)
No, actually it was my second. My first thought was pi...........then one thing led to another.........
What does any of this have to do with Anna Nicole Smith?
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