It uses the strange “quantum states” of matter to perform calculations in a way that, if scaled up, could vastly outperform conventional computers.

The 6mm-by-6mm chip holds nine quantum devices, among them four “quantum bits” that do the calculations.

The team said further scaling up to 10 qubits should be possible this year.

Rather than the ones and zeroes of digital computing, quantum computers deal in what are known as superpositions - states of matter that can be thought of as both one and zero at once.

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Google and NASA teaming up to create a quantum computing lab

Quantum computing seems to be the way of the future, but right now, only a few people have access to the technology. And that’s why Google is teaming up with NASA to create a quantum computing lab, giving scientists, students and engineers the opportunity to see what they can do with it.

The Big Quantum Idea

Former Columbia University physiology and biophysics professor (and director of its Cell Physics Laboratory) Werner Loewenstein tells what physics and quantum computing have to do with the brain in his new book, Physics in Mind.

Read the interview at thedailybeast.com.

Like a guitar string, nanotubes (black) can be clamped and excited to vibrate. An electric field (electrodes: blue) ensures that two of the many possible states can be selectively addressed. (Credit: M.J. Hartmann, TUM)

A study by physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has shown how nanotubes can store information in the form of vibrations.

Using quantum mechanical phenomena, computers could be much more powerful than their classical digital predecessors.

Up to now, researchers have experimented primarily with electrically charged particles. But because nanomechanical devices are not charged, they are much less sensitive to electrical interference.

To date most systems are based on electrically charged particles that are held in an “electromagnetic trap.” A disadvantage of these systems is that they are very sensitive to electromagnetic interference and therefore need extensive shielding. Physicists at TUM have now found a way for information to be stored and quantum mechanically processed in mechanical vibrations.

A carbon nanotube that is clamped at both ends can be excited to oscillate. Like a guitar string, it vibrates more than a million time, allowing information to be retained for up to one second.

Since such a string oscillates among many physically equivalent states, the physicists resorted to a trick: an electric field in the vicinity of the nanotube ensures that two of these states can be selectively addressed. The information can then be written and read optoelectronically.

Firstly, thanks to DVK for the link.

This is honestly so mindblowing that I hardly know where to begin - or even have words to describe this! I hope we all realize that with this innovation, we’re looking at the dawn of a new age. And it would be simple-minded to think that this is merely another computer innovation, like newer iPhones or faster processors. This is much more. This is opening a door to new computing capabilities never before imagined. And with that, changes to our understanding of the universe, technology, and the structure of society as powerful as our metamorphosis has been over the last 100 years.

To quote from Ray Kurzweil (from an earlier RCS post):

“It has been said that quantum computing is to digital computing as a hydrogen bomb is to a firecracker. This is a remarkable statement when we consider that digital computing is quite revolutionary in its own right. The analogy is based on the following observation. Consider (at least in theory) a Universe-sized (non-quantum) computer in which every neutron, electron, and proton in the Universe is turned into a computer, and each one (that is, every particle in the Universe) is able to compute trillions of calculations per second. Now imagine certain problems that this Universe-sized supercomputer would be unable to solve even if we ran that computer until either the next big bang or until all the stars in the Universe died - about ten to thirty billion years. There are many examples of such massively intractable problems; for example, cracking encryption codes that use a thousand bits, or solving the traveling-salesman problem with a thousand cities. While a very massive digital computer (including our theoretical Universe-sized computer) is unable to solve this class of problems, a quantum computer of microscopic size could solve such problems in less than a billionth of a second.” (my emphasis)

In short, this is pretty big news.

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“There’s been a lot of talk lately about how close we are to quantum computing for the masses. Now, Canadian company D-Wave claims to have done it with their D-Wave One…

The D-Wave One represents the successes the D-Wave engineers have reached in the area of quantum annealing, as shown in a paper they submitted to Nature. Even though D-Wave is spare in the details department, the computer’s 128-qubit processor is designed to tackle heavy-duty optimization and complex number theory problems. Conventional general-purpose computers will continue to outpace it in other areas, but this particular area of supercomputing could see AI taken a big step forward…”

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p.s. Lockheed Martin, the high-tech security and defense company, bought one. here. (Also a good link for a bit more info.)

And just to be clear, this computer has major limitations, but like the earliest computers or cell phones, it’s just a matter of time before we see massive improvements. And if Kurzweil is right about his “law of accelerating returns”, it may be a lot sooner than we’d think.

The first secure quantum computer has been made by combining entanglement, a bizarre property of tiny particles, with the power of apparent randomness.
The technique is similar to quantum cryptography, which guarantees the secrecy of a message sent from one place to another, but in this instance guarantees the privacy of data-processing. It could enable code-breakers, governments or private individuals to harness the power of a quantum server remotely without having to worry that the owner can snoop on their data or calculations.

Quantum computers exploit the ability of quantum particles to be in more than one state at the same time. This allows the computer to check many possible solutions to a problem simultaneously.

If this capability can be scaled up, it could allow quantum computers to solve problems that are beyond the power of classical computers. Nobody has yet succeeded in building a useful quantum computer, but if they do, such computers will be expensive and rare. So it is unlikely that people, or even government departments, will have their own.

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