Researchers Unveil First Ever Blueprint To Construct a Large Scale Quantum Computer (phys.org) 94
haruchai quotes a report from Phys.Org: An international team, led by a scientist from the University of Sussex, have today unveiled the first practical blueprint for how to build a quantum computer, the most powerful computer on Earth. The work features a new invention permitting actual quantum bits to be transmitted between individual quantum computing modules in order to obtain a fully modular large-scale machine capable of reaching nearly arbitrary large computational processing powers. Prof Hensinger said: "The availability of a universal quantum computer may have a fundamental impact on society as a whole. Without doubt it is still challenging to build a large-scale machine, but now is the time to translate academic excellence into actual application building on the UK's strengths in this ground-breaking technology. I am very excited to work with industry and government to make this happen." The computer's possibilities for solving, explaining or developing could be endless. However, its size will be anything but small. The machine is expected to fill a large building, consisting of sophisticated vacuum apparatus featuring integrated quantum computing silicon microchips that hold individual charged atoms (ions) using electric fields. The plans for creating a universal quantum computer has been published in the journal Science Advances.
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What does this have to do with quantum computing. Oh wait... maybe you're onto something. Trump is a Quantum politician... he's able to occupy a superposition of realities at the same time. It's not that the crowds at the inauguration were larger for Obama, it's that unlike Trump, normal people living in a collapsed state cannot see all the people from the alternative universe.
Worlds Fastest Computer (Score:3, Insightful)
Quantum computers are built for specific workloads. Citing this as potentially the worlds fastest computer is misleading. It more than likely will not be a general purpose computer.
Re:Worlds Fastest Computer (Score:4, Funny)
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A quantum instruction is still issue by a classical computer and the results of computation are stored in a classical computer. The instructions that are issued are quantum instructions that can solve a very specific part of a problem that can be solved on a quantum computer far more efficiently than on a classical computer. Not all problems fall into this category.
Classical computers turn on and off circuits to do different kinds of computation. The quantum computer does the same thing, but turning on the
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Re:Worlds Fastest Computer (Score:4, Funny)
But can it add 2 + 2?
Yes, but the answer is both 4, and not 4, until you observe the output.
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More importantly, how much closer does it bring us to the computer that can answer the Last Question?
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Insufficient Data for Meaningful Response ...
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We already know the answer. We just don't know the question
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.should we call it QUANTIAC?
Well it does use a "sophisticated vacuum apparatus" - it all checks out.
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Ezekiel 23:20
Nice sig. I just found a new favorite Bible verse.
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I'm glad the young folks of today will get to act like us old-timers in the future.
"Why, I remember when Quantum Computers used to take up WHOLE BUILDINGS! Now you kids wear them around your wrists! You don't know how good you've got it."
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...fills a whole building...first of its kind...
Everyone knows that a larger quantum computer already exists in a location in the US. But that was a private government construction and did not require public funding or press releases to be built.
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I am very excited to work with industry and government to make this happen
Translation: it will be used to break encryption and end privacy.
alternative translation (Score:3)
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I am very excited to work with industry and government to make this happen
Translation: it will be used to break encryption and end privacy.
It will not break all encryption, just careless standard ciphers.
Two creative parties communicating with a pre-arranged scheme should still be safe from eavesdroppers.
The fact that everybody, everywhere, sends photos and videos all over the place all the time makes finding and decoding hidden messages very challenging, even with a quantum computer.
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Awesome, I'll need a hardware key for each of the companies I do business with online. That'll be swell.
Not at first, when this is the size of a building and a huge project, but if it works, very likely within my lifetime.
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The fact that everybody, everywhere, sends photos and videos all over the place all the time makes finding and decoding hidden messages very challenging, even with a quantum computer.
Maybe it's good that people are dumb enough to believe this. I'm not sure.
People are dumb enough to send their CC# unobfuscated in texts and e-mails... to this day.
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algorithms != implementations
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Well, as usual in such press-releases. I am also more than a bit doubtful about the scaling properties. If you have "modules" in a QC, then you do not have a larger QC, but several smaller ones, a bit similar to a multi-core CPU. Two 32 bit CPUs do not make a 64 bit CPU, similarly with QCs. As QCs scale meaningfully only with the number of entangled bits (you cannot break down computations into ones using smaller data-types), this seems a bit pointless.
Re: Worlds Fastest Computer (Score:1)
Most multiple particle entanglement sources are done with processes that produce a pair of entangled photons, and then uses them separately to produce more pairs with a desired global correlated state. That is perfectly suitable for modules, as each module could output the entangled pair. Then either you use those to produce more entangled paits in another two modules or couple them to trapped atoms or whatever you're to store the states during computation in a different pair of modules.
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Two 32 bit CPUs do not make a 64 bit CPU
But two 32 bit ALUs do make a 64 bit ALU.
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Only if you have chaining-connections and for multiplication and division, not even then.
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The word "fastest" does not appear in the summary or in TFA.
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I mean, I would just to be sure that even if the quantum computer achieves sentience and is able to go skynet, we'd be able to handle it in a reasonable timeframe by ripping out the "Oregon trail" floppy disk, but I don't know much about computing
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It can't run crysis...
They are working on a Quantum GPU (QPU) to solve that long existing problem.
I, for one... (Score:5, Funny)
...Both welcome and condemn our new quantum overlords.
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Invest in qbitcoin. You won't know what it's worth until you spend it.
Let's face it.. (Score:4, Funny)
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It will be used to unlock a few phones which will hold no useful information.
More than a few.... think all.
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How does it send the filter signal? (Score:1)
Prof Winfried Hensinger (2), head of Ion Quantum Technology Group (3) at the University of Sussex, who has been leading this research, said: "For many years, people said that it was completely impossible to construct an actual quantum computer. With our work we have not only shown that it can be done but now we are delivering a nuts and bolts construction plan to build an actual large-scale machine."
Nah, we think you built another analogue computer, and branded it 'Quantum' while it doesn't actually use ent
Facts and alternative facts (Score:5, Insightful)
In the current political climate, a computer that can simultaneously deal with facts and unfacts may have useful applications. In the past, we only needed to keep track of real data. Going forward, it seems we need to simultaneously handle both actual data and what the user wants to be the actual data. Being able to draw conclusions from the superposition of both versions of reality needs to be extended from social media into practical applications.
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In the current political climate, a computer that can simultaneously deal with facts and unfacts may have useful applications. In the past, we only needed to keep track of real data. Going forward, it seems we need to simultaneously handle both actual data and what the user wants to be the actual data. Being able to draw conclusions from the superposition of both versions of reality needs to be extended from social media into practical applications.
We are actually living the endgame of the Matrix... humans aren't just used for power, their collective perception of the Matrix is solving real-world problems. The incorporation of Alternate Facts into the collective consciousness is a testbed for a physical quantum computer that the overlords are designing.
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Humans are those computers.
Your assertion that we only needed to keep track of "real data" is so deeply assumptive, naive, and flawed I am surprised you can feed yourself. Anything from history and news to what happened on the way to work, even something as simple as an interaction between two people, is and always has been subject to spin, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, error, and good old deliberate lies. There is always a difference between what actually happened and the story
Obligatory SMBC (Score:5, Informative)
This comic [smbc-comics.com] is a more in-depth yet accessible explanation of quantum computers than anything I'd ever read on Slashdot.
Yes, but.... (Score:1)
How many? (Score:2)
However, its size will be anything but small. The machine is expected to fill a large building,
That's OK. To (mis)quote Thomas Watson, I doubt the world will need more than 5 quantum computers.
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However, its size will be anything but small. The machine is expected to fill a large building,
That's OK. To (mis)quote Thomas Watson, I doubt the world will need more than 5 quantum computers.
Surely you only need one - it could perform all possible computations at once.
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"Researchers Unveil First Ever Blueprint To Co..." (Score:1)
You mean... (Score:2)
To quote Scott Aaronson (Score:1)
ENIAC too, er, 2! (Score:1)
And in 20-25 years, the desktop will be a PQC - Personal Quantum Computer!
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