DailyDirt: Quantum Computers Are Both Here And Not Here...
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Quantum computers are starting to become a commercial reality as multiple companies start to take advantage of the strange laws of quantum physics to solve complex mathematical problems. The hardware is difficult enough to build, but assuming the hardware actually exists, programmers now have to figure out how to write software for qubits. Here are just a few links on these new computers that aren't quite ready to replace desktop PCs.- Lockheed Martin bought a D-Wave Systems quantum computer in 2011, and there are a few other customers and partners trying to develop for this particular computer. NASA, Google, and Aerospace Concepts are testing out these new-fangled machines to solve optimization problems and machine learning, among other things quantum information can tackle. [url]
- The availability of ultra-pure silicon could make it a bit easier to build quantum computers, and now a straightforward process for obtaining 99.9999% pure silicon is practical. Pure silicon is a good substrate for holding a qubit, as substrate impurities negatively affect the performance of quantum manipulations. [url]
- Google has played around with D-Wave quantum computers to study computer vision problems with a few qubits. In 2007, D-Wave had a 16-qubit system, and now it has a 512-qubit computer. It's improving with time, but it's not entirely clear when this system is better than a traditional x86 processor. [url]
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Filed Under: algorithm, hardware, physics, quantum computer, qubit, silicon
Companies: aerospace concepts, d-wave, google, lockheed martin, nasa
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Wow. That's essentially perfect Moore's Law growth. Another 20 years and they'll be mainstream. :P
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Schrodinger's computer?
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Re: Schrodinger's computer?
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Let me check my cat
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Make encryption obsolete
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Re: Make encryption obsolete
All they could do is to solve a certain class of "hard" problems on which some existing public key algorithms are based.
Encryption would then have to switch to a different class of hard problems or to Quantum Encryption (which itself is nearer to market than the kind of Quantum Computer that can break RSA.)
Furthermore it is not clear in what sense the D wave machine is a quantum computer - since it isn't designed to run Shor's Algorithm and the things it does do can be done faster by better algorithms on a classical machine.
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