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posted by janrinok on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the year-of-quantum-computing-on-desktop dept.

A solution to one of the key problems holding back the development of quantum computers has been demonstrated by researchers at Google and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Many more problems remain to be solved, but experts in the field say it is an important step toward a fully functional quantum computer. Such a machine could perform calculations that would take a conventional computer millions of years to complete.

The Google and UCSB researchers showed they could program groups of qubits—devices that represent information using fragile quantum physics—to detect certain kinds of error, and to prevent those errors from ruining a calculation. The new advance comes from researchers led by John Martinis, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who last year joined Google to set up a quantum computing research lab (see “Google Launches Effort to Build Its Own Quantum Computer”)

[Abstract]: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7541/full/nature14270.html

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:42PM (#153645)

    It will really screw up our current security models...

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by maxim on Thursday March 05 2015, @09:44PM

      by maxim (2543) <maximlevitsky@gmail.com> on Thursday March 05 2015, @09:44PM (#153660)

      Nope. It wil allow me to break my RSA1024 signed bootloader.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:19PM (#153666)

        And your bank's ssl cert...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:13PM (#153665)

      It might be that Quantum Computers have been developed, and bigbruther keeps telling us how difficult they are to make. They do not have our interests in mind, rather how to control us, make us docile. The game runs very deep, and they have our future planned. Come on, they have time and infinite resources. For them, its not about survival anymore; its about having everything, and absolute control. How else would anyone explain why some days ago Elon Musk said: A.I is very dangerous and we should be aware of that. Then Stephen Hawking repeated this, even though none of them have any experience developing or working with A.I, even when the paid press said Hawking had more street cred than Elon Musk.

      In similar vein:
      It also seems that they are good at reading peoples minds. Their original program started in the 1960's (or earlier) when the US govt hired people to read Soviet scientists minds. It looks as if they got really good at it, and now all governments of the world know of this technique, and have perfected it.
      I hope I am wrong.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:45PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:45PM (#153668)

      Don't worry: If it's like a lot of quantum mechanics, it will simultaneously work perfectly and not work at all.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 1) by jcm on Friday March 06 2015, @11:11PM

        by jcm (4110) on Friday March 06 2015, @11:11PM (#153993)

        In fact, it will work, but only when you don't observe the computation.
        Debugging will be hard !

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @12:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @12:42AM (#153688)

      Your security models are already screwed.

      It'll be quantum encryption in the end.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @10:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @10:37AM (#153792)

      True, but there's a fair amount of research into post-quantum cryptography [wikipedia.org] which shows promise. Hopefully one of those algorithms will be production ready before quantum computers are.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 06 2015, @12:39AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 06 2015, @12:39AM (#153687) Journal

    to detect certain kinds of error, and to prevent those errors from ruining a calculation.

    In the context: "error = not the kind of result Google likes"?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford