Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

NASA Backs Quantum Computing Claim

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Mar 09, 2007 05:45 PM
from the but-they-did-not-shoot-the-deputy dept.
NASA Space Science
narramissic writes "Canadian startup D-Wave's demonstration via Web link of a prototype quantum computer in mid-February was met with skepticism in the academic community, but NASA has confirmed that it did, in fact, build a special chip used in the disputed demonstration. According to an article on ITworld, D-Wave designed the quantum chip and then contracted with NASA to build it."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

NASA Backs Quantum Computing Claim 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • How can we trust NASA? (Score:3, Funny)

    by simdan (207210) on Friday March 09 2007, @05:48PM (#18295172) Homepage
    After all, aren't they the ones that filmed a moon landing in some studio?

    Sorry to bring out all the conspiracy nuts, couldn't resist. :-P

  • contracted NASA?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by paranoid123 (633401) on Friday March 09 2007, @05:51PM (#18295194)
    Since when was NASA in the contracting-to-manufacture-computer business? NASA is more of a bureaucracy with a collection of labs all over the nation. They usually hand out the contracts. When they need computers they usually contract IBM or Silicon Graphics (maybe not lately) to do so.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      RTFA

    • Re:contracted NASA?? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Seumas (6865) on Friday March 09 2007, @05:53PM (#18295222)
      How else is NASA supposed to afford diapers?!
    • NASA developed this chip on their first Apollo mission to the moon. I saw it myself on television as they recorded one of their monitors and they took many pictures to prove it was real.

    • Re:contracted NASA?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by bugnuts (94678) on Friday March 09 2007, @06:14PM (#18295406) Journal
      Several government agencies, especially national labs, do lots of civilian work. Often the labs do the basic research, and companies turn it into products at affordable prices.

      If you read TFA, it stated that only certain agencies had the equipment to make and run the chips in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TopSpin (753) *
      NASA leases facilities and performs contract work routinely. This is how they keep valuable people and justify maintaining plant and equipment for which they have no immediate need. The classic case is wind tunnel time; both the facility and the staff can be leased by private parties.

      Griffen was recently lobbying Congress [nasa.gov] (see pages 7-8) about this; apparently he would like some red tape cut to permit NASA to do this with certain Shuttle facilities where it currently isn't allowed.

  • Existence does not imply functionality. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan Slotman (974474) on Friday March 09 2007, @05:51PM (#18295204)
    The existence of a chip does not imply that said chip actually works.

  • Does that NASA built a chip mean anything? (Score:5, Informative)

    by stratjakt (596332) on Friday March 09 2007, @05:52PM (#18295212) Journal
    Does it mean the chip works, and it actually performs quantum calculations? I see nothing in the TFA where NASA confirms or denys the actual function of the chip, just that they made it based on D-Wave's design.

    I still don't see any proof that anyone computed anything quantumly. How hard is this to prove, anyways, to all the quantum physicists in the house?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Does it mean the chip works, and it actually performs quantum calculations?

      It worked in one universe anyway

    • The first rule of quantum computing is don't ask questions.

    • Re:Does that NASA built a chip mean anything? (Score:5, Informative)

      by sco08y (615665) on Friday March 09 2007, @07:15PM (#18295958)
      How hard is this to prove, anyways, to all the quantum physicists in the house?

      IANAQP, but I think it's pretty hard to prove given that you can simulate a quantum computer with a classical computer. (Source. [caltech.edu])

      But, if you have lots of qbits then you can simply argue that it's running too fast to be a simulation:

      "Take for example a system of only a few hundred qubits, this exists in a Hilbert space of dimension ~1090 that in simulation would require a classical computer to work with exponentially large matrices (to perform calculations on each individual state, which is also represented as a matrix), meaning it would take an exponentially longer time than even a primitive quantum computer." (ibid)

      So I'm thinking that when they get to their 64 or 128 qbit device that we know for certain that it's genuine.

      I wonder how long it'll be before Intel and Motorola are selling quantum computers and arguing about the qbit myth?

    • Re:Does that NASA built a chip mean anything? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tbo (35008) on Friday March 09 2007, @07:34PM (#18296076) Journal
      Disclaimer: IAAPRQC (I Am A Physicist Researching Quantum Computing).

      I have no doubt their chip actually exists. That's not what people are skeptical of. There are more fundamental questions, a few of which I'll list below, along with my guesses as to the answers:

      1) Does their chip demonstrate global coherence?
      Maybe.

      2) If yes to (1), can they maintain that when scaling up to larger numbers of qubits?
      Almost certainly not with anything like their present design, unless they move to implement quantum error correction and the massive amounts of overhead that entails.

      3) If no to either (1) or (2), can they implement a practical algorithm that gives at least a sqrt(N) speed-up over classical computers without global coherence?
      Possible, but would be surprising if true. This is probably the main thing the academic community is skeptical about--we want to see some peer-reviewed research from D-Wave on this.

      4) Why is all the press coverage so horribly wrong and misinformative?
      Because it's more fun to make jokes and stupid statements about quantum mechanics than it is to actually write a clear and well-researched article. Also, talking to an actual physicist is far too scary for your typical J-school grad.

      See this post [scottaaronson.com] on Scott Aaronson's blog for a much more informative and detailed analysis of D-Wave's claims.
      • Thank you. Maybe.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rmckeethen (130580)

        Also, talking to an actual physicist is far too scary for your typical J-school grad.

        As it happens, I am a J-school graduate, and I work with a real-life physicist. We talk almost every day, and I don't find him scary at all. Granted, we don't talk about quantum physics on a daily basis, but we do talk about other highly-technical subjects. Still, perhaps I'm just not your typical J-school student -- my very first published story was on extra-solar planet detection, a subject I find fascinating.

        During

        • Re:Does that NASA built a chip mean anything? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by tbo (35008) on Friday March 09 2007, @11:58PM (#18297524) Journal
          It's good to hear that there are at least some journalists with an interest and an aptitude for science. I think the entire quantum computing academic community has been a bit bummed out about the quality of media coverage lately. Scott Aaronson's blog [scottaaronson.com] has a number of posts discussing this issue, including a letter that he wrote to The Economist about its particularly bad D-Wave coverage. There is also some good news--Scott got asked by Scientific American to write a summary of Shor's algorithm--but mostly reading press coverage of our field is just maddening.

          Science is hard work -- is it really surprising that interpreting scientific research, and translating results into layman's terms, is in some ways almost as hard?

          No, it's certainly not surprising. I get a reminder of how hard it is to explain this stuff every time I try to tell someone what I do and their eyes glaze over. I don't claim to be good at explaining it, whereas science journalists seem to be quite good at making stuff entertaining and bringing it down to a layman's level. The problem is the completely uncritical coverage of miraculous claims, and the glaring technical errors that horribly distort the science. Is it common for journalists/editors to run a draft of their article past an actual scientist in the field? If not, why doesn't this happen? Pride? Deadlines? Journalism guidelines?

          After being burned on a previous interview, I'd now be very reluctant to give an interview about my work without the reporter agreeing to run a draft past me for me to check for technical accuracy. Do science journalists honor that kind of request? If not, can you give me a journalist's perspective on what I can do to ensure the resulting article is accurate? I ask because I've got a paper coming out soon that might attract a bit of media interest.
  • This is irrelevant. DWave claimed to have the first commercial quantum computer. And then the details are its only a few bits (nothing new), can't come close to matching the performance of a classical computer (obvious), and then a complete absence of any indicators that the design will scale other than "we plan to have 1000 bits in a year".

    What they claimed is trivial, the problem academics have is that they claimed it wasn't and that it will scale.
  • I'm a tenured professor in quantumcomputing and I can assure you the chip works! This is based on a paper I often require for my students, and I would hang my own Ph.D. on it's credibility.

    O, wait...

    This was meant to be posted here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/09/145221 9 [slashdot.org]

    Sorry, my mistake!

  • Big Deal? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I still don't understand what all the fuss is about. So there's a computer capable of making really really really small calculations. I need a computer to make BIG calculations for me. Don't sweat the small stuff, I say.

  • First... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Friday March 09 2007, @06:55PM (#18295776)
    First they ignore you, then laugh at you, then attack you, then you win.

    The bad part is that fakes share the same fate, except the last bit.
    • In the same vein...

      "They laughed at Galileo! They laughed at the Wright Brothers!"

      Yup.

      They also laughed at Bozo The Clown.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zCyl (14362)

      The bad part is that fakes share the same fate, except the last bit.

      Isn't that more like:

      1. They ignore you.
      2. They laugh at you.
      3. They attack you.
      4. ...
      5. Profit.
      6. Move to a small island.
    • From what I've seen, the people in the know haven't ignored, laughed, or attacked. They've simply responded with their normal skepticism. Solving Sudoku and throwing around buzzwords like NP-complete is a great way to impress the media and all, but they're waiting for solid proof. They could also improve their case by asking their marketing team to shut up for a while and giving their engineers a chance to say something coherent about the invention.

      Quickly producing the prime factors of large arbitrary n

  • It's real! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pedrito (94783) on Friday March 09 2007, @07:14PM (#18295938) Homepage
    I know it's real. I've actually seen it in action. An unfortunate side-effect is that my cat suddenly died... and didn't.

  • Not this again... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by posterlogo (943853) on Friday March 09 2007, @07:19PM (#18295980)
    NASA doesn't necessarily "back quantum computing claim" of D-Link. They just confirmed they made a chip for them. Didn't we already find out a month or so ago that, according to their own admission, it's not a true quantum computer, but it MAY use some quantum principles in its design? As far as I care, even that claim hasn't been verified.
  • This D-Wave quantum computer seems to be neither here not there.

  • "backed the claim" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MaggieL (10193) on Friday March 09 2007, @07:26PM (#18296022)
    Insofar as I can tell, JPL has backed the claim that they made the chip; nothing further.
  • ...But I will worry when they have their chips built by Setec Astronomy, instead.

    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(film) [wikipedia.org])

  • its about time! (Score:4, Funny)

    by stim216 (881386) on Friday March 09 2007, @10:48PM (#18297192)
    Finally! A computer that can run vista!
  • I'm pissed that my lifetime financing NASA, which is usually the government expense of which I'm most proud, is subsidizing some foreign corporation's R&D pulling it ahead of American business. America isn't necessarily any better or more deserving of first place, but it's my country, the one I'm paying for, the one I'm living in, the one NASA exists to serve. I'm perfectly happy with all the returns from NASA's American research investments into the world's benefit. But directing NASA's limited operati
    • NASA has equipement no one else has.
      They have the best people at MDL.
      NASA takes money from companies to produce chips no one else can.

      This, is a good thing.

      "I've seen firsthand how easy it is to get miilions of dollars out of government agencies for cockamamy schemes."

      Doubtfull at best.

      • "I've seen firsthand how easy it is to get miilions of dollars out of government agencies for cockamamy schemes."

        The CEO of my second last employer set up a fake company into which was sunk 3 or 4 million dollars of grants from the city. They had no employees but used the reputations of people who had previously worked for this guy. For example, in one press release they quoted me as if I worked for him (because I have a good reputation in the niche I work in). They were just this empty shell that the cit

    • Perhaps you missed the part where they paid NASA to do this. That's not how a scam usually works.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.