Quantum computing may be leaping out of the lab soon:
Quantum computing has long seemed like one of those technologies that are 20 years away, and always will be. But 2017 could be the year that the field sheds its research-only image. Computing giants Google and Microsoft recently hired a host of leading lights, and have set challenging goals for this year. Their ambition reflects a broader transition taking place at start-ups and academic research labs alike: to move from pure science towards engineering. "People are really building things," says Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park who co-founded the start-up IonQ in 2015. "I've never seen anything like that. It's no longer just research."
Google started working on a form of quantum computing that harnesses superconductivity in 2014. It hopes this year, or shortly after, to perform a computation that is beyond even the most powerful 'classical' supercomputers — an elusive milestone known as quantum supremacy. Its rival, Microsoft, is betting on an intriguing but unproven concept, topological quantum computing, and hopes to perform a first demonstration of the technology.
Separate article about IonQ.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:26AM
I had a fascinating conversation with a quantum physicist a few years ago.
He'd just received a multi-million pound grant from the UK and was working on quantum entangling domains by seeding crystalline substrates with impurities.
At the conclusion of our conversation, I asked him how long he thought it would be before quantum computing (at least a few qbits able to be used in synchrony) and he gave a fascinating answer: "we think we have a good method, but no-one is really sure yet; it may even be that a true quantum computer ends up being theoretically impossible."
Heisenberg may yet have his day...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:27PM
We can have quantum computing, BUT either some cats will die, or many cats will semi-die.