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February 14, 2007 4:00 AM PST
Start-up demos quantum computer
Last modified: February 14, 2007 8:02 AM PST
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The Canadian company on Tuesday gave a public demonstration of Orion, its quantum computer, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. D-Wave said it is going to try to sell computing services to corporate customers in the first quarter of 2008.
Quantum computers, which researchers have experimented with for years but which haven't yet existed outside of the laboratory, are radically different than today's electronic computers. D-Wave's computer is based around a silicon chip that houses 16 "qubits," the equivalent of a storage bit in a conventional computer, connected to each other. Each qubit consists of dots of the element niobium surrounded by coils of wire.
When electrical current comes down the wire, magnetic fields are generated, which, in turn, causes the change in the state of the qubit. Because scientists understand how niobium will react to magnetic fields and calculate the exact pattern and timing of the magnetic fields created, the pattern of changes exhibited by the niobium can then be translated into an answer that humans can understand.
"The qubits behave according to a certain set of rules," said founder and Chief Technology Officer Geordie Rose, who likened quantum computing to trying to decipher the language of atoms. "Quantum computing is the translation of those laws into a format that we can take."
Ultimately, D-Wave's computer is an analog computer, according to Alexey Andreev, a venture capitalist at Harris & Harris and an investor in D-Wave. Answers to programs run on the computer come in the form of a physical simulation. Answers to problems in digital computers are essentially mathematical solutions.
Because of its inherent properties, D-Wave's computer is optimized for running complex and oftentimes consuming simulations--for example, what happens when different variables are changed in an ornate financial model, or how different proteins interact with various synthetic, simulated pharmaceuticals. The system also could be used for nonscientific research such as searching patent databases for matches and overlap of intellectual property.
"We view these machines as probability distribution generators," Rose said. "We want to build an actual physical embodiment of a hard math problem."
Right now, Orion is a "proof of concept," a demonstration of what the final product could look like. At the demonstration, Rose had the system come up with answers to Sudoku problems and, in another demo, seek out similar molecules to the active ingredient in the drug Prilosec in a chemical database. The computer found several molecules that shared similar structural elements with Prilosec, but the molecule that matched it closest was the active ingredient in another drug called Nexium. Plucking out Nexium demonstrated the system's accuracy, the company said. Nexium is actually a mirror image of the molecule in Prilosec that AstraZeneca invented to extend its patents.
In another example, he ran a seating chart program where each guest had particular seating requirements. (Cleopatra could not sit next to meat eaters. Genghis Khan eats meat, and so on.) The system came up with a seating plan with a minimum number of violations of protocol.
The computer itself--which is cooled down to 4 millikelvin (or nearly minus 273.15 degrees Celsius) with liquid helium--was actually in Canada. Attendees only saw the results on a screen. Still, it was the largest demonstration of a quantum computer ever, Rose said.
By the end of the year, however, D-Wave will have a 32-qubit system. It plans to begin to rent out time on its computers to corporate customers in the first quarter of next year, said CEO Herb Martin. Customer won't have to learn special programming techniques or other tricks to take advantage of the service; sending a problem to D-Wave will be similar to outsourcing it to any other company. Later, D-Wave may lease or sell computers, Martin added.
By the second quarter of 2008, the company plans to have a 512-qubit system, and a 1,024-qubit system is expected by the end of that year.
Quantum computers, Martin emphasized, will not displace digital computers. Instead, they will serve as co-processors for large problems.
But is there a market for renting computing cycles? Sun Microsystems a few years ago opened up a server farm for hire for chemical and pharmaceutical companies. It has found few takers.
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In any case it's really the final frontier for local calculations or calculations that the human mind needs to understand. If we do go faster then light someday we will still use quantum through probably something like Quantum Tunneling but the results will still be the same "instant" to us. So this seems great like the final frontier. I hope we can put this into better hard practice as far as controlling atoms and teleportation safely and productively.
(NP problems, can now be solved instantaniously,as long as the answer can be posed in the form of the number of QBits available)
On the other hand, there will now be a mad rush to find ways to defend against criminals with access to such systems. For banks and governments, this could mean replacing all existing hardware with Quantum compatible equipment, at huge cost.
Want to bet paper documents will become King again?
quantum about their system. So far, all we know is that they
have a well-developed interface for communicating with their
system. But, there are serious open questions about the
implementation they have chosen.
I'd like to point out a few inaccuracies in the article:
"a computer that calculates by studying the behavior of a
niobium atom"
and
"Each qubit consists of dots of the element niobium surrounded
by coils of wire."
Qubits are sometimes referred to as artificial atoms, but they are
not the same as actual atoms. D-wave uses persistant current
loops as their qubits. Current flows clockwise or counter-
clockwise around the loop. The current produces a small
magnetic field which can be measured with a SQUID (essentially
a very sensitive magnetomemter).
"Because scientists understand how niobium will react to
magnetic fields and calculate the exact pattern and timing of the
magnetic fields created, the pattern of changes exhibited by the
niobium can then be translated into an answer that humans can
understand."
This has very little to do with niobium. The important thing is
that niobium is a superconductor with a relatively high transition
temperature (about 9 Kelvin) and that there are robust processes
for fabricating Josephson junctions (a critical element of their
qubit and SQUID readout) with niobium. But this could also be
done with aluminum. Also, you don't calculate the state of each
qubit, you measure it. If you could calculate the state
beforehand, there would be no need to have the quantum
computer. It happens that D-wave is using few enough qubits
that you CAN calculate the evolution of their system, which is
why most scientists are extremely skeptical of this
announcement.
"Ultimately, D-Wave's computer is an analog computer,
according to Alexey Andreev"
if it's an analog computer, then it definitely is not a quantum
computer
I'm glad that D-Wave is getting quantum computing in the news
again, I just hope they aren't pulling the wool over our eyes.
It would appear that with D-Wave's technology, we need to do the cooling capacity first and then insert as much computing power as possible. And so the cost trade-off of digital vs quantum computing will be how the information entropy of the complexity of the problem solved is mapped into physical entropy (i.e., heat dissipation) in either method. May the lower contributor to heat genrated per bit of information be the winner.
My prediction, needs large scale to be economic from the get go. My second prediciton is that it will be used successfully in risk models for finance first and be deployed convincingly in 5 years. The D-Wave programmers need to show others how to represent their problems in an analog fashion.
Forty years ago, Morris Rubinoff (RIP), my teacher in a graduate hardware course at UPenn said Analog computers would succeed in the end because of the nature of the problems they solve. He also predicted hybrids. Think I will call the cost of quantum computing curve Rubinoff's Law. Question: What is the analog (pun not intended) in quantum computing to transistor in digital? Answer: What is a qubit. Last question: What is the period of doubling? Answer: ??
Do not confuse a Qbit (Quantum bit) with a Qbert (Old vidio game where an alien jumps around flipping boxes and trying not to to get stepped on by a snake)
brainy: http://brain.com
- QSql
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by davidmec
February 16, 2007 5:51 AM PST
- How would SQL have to be modified for Quantum computing, It is already constraint based (mostly).
-
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