Seen here is a silicon chip housing three superconducting quantum bits, or qubits. IBM believes qubits are the key to its quantum computing efforts. (Credit: IBM Research)
Posted on 03/08/2012 7:01:25 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
With its latest research, Big Blue says it's reached device performance close to the minimum requirements for implementing a "practical quantum computer." But many hurdles remain.
Seen here is a silicon chip housing three superconducting quantum bits, or qubits. IBM believes qubits are the key to its quantum computing efforts. (Credit: IBM Research)
Scientists at IBM say they have made a quantum computing breakthrough that demonstrates that a full-scale quantum computer is not only possible but is within reasonable reach.
In an announcement being made today at the American Physical Society in Boston, Matthias Steffen, manager of IBM's experimental quantum computing group, will unveil the research that has led his team to conclude they are the brink of developing scalable technology that could far outstrip what even the strongest supercomputers can do today.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
fyi
With transistor junctions down to the size of an atom, quantum computers are bound to become reality very soon.
Riiiiight. What’s a qubit?
Great article; thanks for posting it (even if I am a bit slow to pick up on it).
Its a device to keep score.
One of the things that makes the work huge is fact checking the results.
My test equip takes me out to .000000000 decimal places.
I round that to .000 for practical applications and .000000000 for precision applications
These guys are looking at .000000000000000000 or something to that effect. How can you prove that there are no physical influences in the raw data or mistakes in the math that are misleading?
I look at things in nanoseconds. I will trust the big guys to figure this out.
I can understand two’s complements and have a inkling of I&Q pairs, but this stuff blows my mind.
This is way harder to understand than J K valence shells.
I am in over my head LOL
Qubit, Forebit, Hexbit, a Dollar
Sounds like a football cheer
How long can you tread water?
Good question. A quick search results in them never really defining it as more than the set of quantum states, but once it’s read, you detect only a bit [0,1]. Now I’m curious and will have to do more research.
...all for the Gators...stand up and Holler!
(because most readers won't get your reference)
Well, thanks, you and dfwgator did. The fellow who said he was over his head, could be, say, threading water, so I’d count him in too.
Noah had to get all the animals in groups of two, male and female, thus starting the binary computing system. He also knew the qubit so the guy was way ahead of his time.
Wonder which generation of quantum computers will become aware?
Noah was the Man!
One of the classes I teach is Computer Organization. The Freshman have trouble enough understanding that. Can’t imagine them grasping Quantum concepts—or even most Professors for that matter.
Perhaps some form of usable technology in real terms will evolve from this basic research. I don’t follow these things any more. And surely have no background on these forms of transistor development. So I will keep it at a ... good wishes to IBM in their research efforts in this area.
Its pretty spiffy, but it will NEVER think on its own. Its great at telling you where some geek thinks there is good pizza joint, but I know better pizza joints where folks don't sit around looking at their iphones. In fact the Ipad3 is pretty useless for serious data manipulation because the interface is so rigid.
Half the world walks around now staring at their hand.
Indeed!
Throw enough computing power behind a complex learning OS (which quantum computers could prove to be) and you may come up a silicone based system that mimics organic systems (us) so perfectly that you can’t distinguish between them.........Just guessing.
They have difficulty ordering pizza.
I don’t see it happening
Weve done great things with silicon and software.
Software is logic, and its impossible for it to emulate the human mind imho.
Oh, you can make it replicate portions of popular thought, but it even does that poorly.
The code is only as good as the programmer.
I have never seen a program that learns from it self and external input well.
The world hated that talking paper clip from microshaft!
I want Heisenberg Compensators, and I want them now. ;’) Thanks Ernest_at_the_Beach.
Except that when you say "This operating system blows" you're not calling it a slut. (Can I say that?)
Cheers!
I wasn't necessarily thinking of a human writing the code.
I have never seen a program that learns from it self and external input well.
Not yet, but a quantum leap in computing power and speed should help that along.(A self adjusting loop program that adjusted itself thousands of times a second to constantly varying inputs to optimize the measurements it was taking on a varying exponential decay curve.
That was 25 years ago. Things done got a lot faster now and will continue to get better.)
The world hated that talking paper clip from microshaft!
As stupid as I see people acting lately, *Clippie* may make a comeback.
LOL, you had a long way to go there, but you got it over the plate :^)
Well that's kind of my wider point.
I hope we never do have a system that takes in all of the input equally.
We'll end up with cyber dumbocrats in the congress executive and judiciary.
He's on first!
Think that example would be great in a Dilbert cartoon!
CA these kids understand pentode tubes?
Can they understand how radio changed the world?
My bottom line is that you can’t replace us and if they did do it with a computer, they would put a bounty on us.
I would personally track down clippy and end it.
I’s like to see an animated paperclip do that.
How does one program that dynamic into a bit of silicon and some code?
Dogbert rules.
Now you're talking my language.
Filaments, cathode, control grid, screen grid, suppressor grid, plate, B+, etc, etc.
I have seen great engineers do shit on paper and hands on.
Ive seen lousy engineers get complacent with software driven engineering programs.
One of the things I have noticed with that with automated programs, hardware guys get complacent.
Its the same in the commercial world, people get mesmerized with flash and stop thinking about the goal
I know a bunch of smart SOBS that play call of duty on the x box 360 who never served and wouldn’t know one end of a gun from another.
How are they to understand Quantum computers if they dont understand the basics?
Seriously.
Sorry to be cynical, but I’ll venture to guess this will immediately be outsourced to the PRC and we’ll go further into debt.
That’s my point Cajun,they have no clue.
We are floating them on hardware.
I remember it well. ... where’s my mitten ?
Start by watching the Wizard of Oz six times. Then read The End of Science by John Horgan (1996).
Trust me on this one.
LOL. You're showing your age.
an aside: I have all of his albums, pure comic genius. Today's yutes would be amazed how we entertained ourselves back then. 'You sat around and listened to what? How is that any fun???'
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