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IBM Raises the Bar with a 50-Qubit Quantum Computer
IBM established a landmark in computing Friday, announcing a quantum computer that handles 50 quantum bits, or qubits. The company is also making a 20-qubit system available through its cloud computing platform.
IBM, Google, Intel, and a San Francisco startup called Rigetti are all currently racing to build useful quantum systems. These machines process information in a different way from traditional computers, using the counterintuitive nature of quantum physics.
The announcement does not mean quantum computing is ready for common use. The system IBM has developed is still extremely finicky and challenging to use, as are those being built by others. In both the 50- and the 20-qubit systems, the quantum state is preserved for 90 microseconds—a record for the industry, but still an extremely short period of time.
[...] IBM is also announcing an upgrade to its quantum cloud software system today. "We're at world record pace. But we've got to make sure non-physicists can use this," Gil says.
The announcement should perhaps be treated cautiously, though. Andrew Childs, a professor at the University of Maryland, points out that IBM has not published details of its system in a peer-reviewed journal. "IBM's team is fantastic and it's clear they're serious about this, but without looking at the details it's hard to comment," he says. Childs says the larger number of qubits does not necessarily translate to a leap in computational capability. "Those qubits might be noisy, and there could be issues with how well connected they are," he says.
Also at The Mercury News and SiliconANGLE.
Previously: IBM Promises Commercialization of 50 Qubit Quantum Computers
IBM and D-Wave Quantum Computing Announcements
Intel Ships 17-Qubit Quantum Chip to Researchers
Google's Quantum Computing Plans Threatened by IBM Curveball (doesn't this undermine IBM's quantum system as well?)
Related: Microsoft is Developing a Quantum Computing Programming Language
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2017, @04:58PM (9 children)
For someone who does not quite grasp the quantum computing thing entirely, how does this compare in terms of "horsepower". Is it like an old 486dx2 or is it a quad-core intel or? I'd love to understand more about this but I cant seem to get my head around it entirely.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2017, @05:19PM (2 children)
This is a completely different paradigm, therefore such a comparison doesn't make sense.
To make an analogy: Imagine that usually numbers are written in unary representation (that is, e.g. ten is IIIIIIIIII). To get more numbers onto the same space, mechanisms are devised that can make the I's smaller and smaller. The quality is given by how large a number you can write on a given sheet of paper; take twice the paper, you can write twice the number.
Now someone tells you he has found a revolutionary new way to write down numbers, namely the binary system. He invented a second symbol, O, for this. This is vastly better on writing large numbers. However, writing an O takes much more space than writing an I, let's say four times as much.
Now you ask: If it is so much more space efficient, then which size of unary writing is this new binary writing comparable with?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday November 15 2017, @05:59PM (1 child)
I see where you are going, but there is a clear relationship between unary and binary; at the same feature size binary numbers require log2 n digits as the unary system. And that expresses its space efficiency quite well.
q-bits, as I understand it can exist as a superposition of 0 and 1. So, theoretically, (and again limited by understanding of what is really going on); if you had 8 q-bits than you theoretically are representing, all the numbers from 0 to 28-1 at once. So if you had a problem that classically iterated through each of the 256 possibilies to see if it was a solution, then with q-bits that calculation instead of taking n time would take constant time, you'd operate once on the super-position-state and get the output solution; as the quantum computer instead of iterating would effectively operate on all the possibilities at once.
Sort of like how a GPU with its thousands of cores can do the same operation on thousands of inputs all at once; except you don't need a physical core for parallel operation. Continuing that analogy, then a 256 core GPU and an 8 bit qbit quantum computer can sort of do the same amount of work in one 'pass'. But you will rapidly run into limits on cores... a 50 qbit computer ... can do what a classical computer would need a quadrillion cores to do. (Again... not exactly, but that's sort of the idea of the relative scale. And just because it has 50 qbits does not make it equivalent to a quadrillion core GPU, modern GPUs are 'clocked' much much faster than quantum computers; and a qbit is just a single bit. (each gpu core works on 16, 32, or 64 bits at a time. So 50 qbits isn't THAT impressive... but if it continues to grow and we get up to kilo-qbits, mega-qbits and beyond...then it could potentially do some types of calculations faster than all the classical computers ever built could do. Again I'd like to throw in the disclaimer that i don't know what im talking about very well.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 15 2017, @10:02PM
As to the OP question: I'd think of this 50 qbit computer in the realm of the Intel 4004 chips, as far as the quantum computing is concerned - very early stage, very few and extremely specific applications.
It's surrounded by a highly sophisticated modern binary system, but at its core, it's got 50 qbits, like 50 flip-flops, but quantum - and comparing a flip-flop to a qbit is sort of like comparing apples and honey bees.
By the way, for any who are interested, IBM has a 20 qbit device hooked up to a web interface which is occasionally available for the general public to experiment with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Quantum_Experience [wikipedia.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday November 15 2017, @09:56PM (4 children)
It's somewhere between the pace of of a 3 legged dog and the stampede of a horny Venezuelan bull; To the exponent/%err.
It's like a bitcoin ASIC\dGPU. It does some things far better; And most things worse.
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Nielsen & Chuang [wikipedia.org].
Mind you, QC is essentially only useful for big pharma and maybe heavy silicon in chemical simulations. And while pharma can probably already benefit from it, digital\analog design will take a few years to reach the production nodes necessary to actually produce whatever they brute force out of it.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 16 2017, @12:00AM (3 children)
I'm pretty sure the NSA will also want to have a quantum computer. And not for doing chemistry. ;-)
Anyway, you sound like that IBM employee who once estimated that the world will need maybe 5 computers.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday November 16 2017, @12:32AM (2 children)
That quote crossed my mind when I wrote that post. But the thing is, was he wrong? The PC is dying as appliances and the "cloud" are slowly taking over. I believe some people will keep having general purpose computers at home. But like automotive fearing people will stop owning cars once they're autonomous, I fear personal computers will become public terminals and smartphones as Intel and Co. keep closing up the PC.
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 16 2017, @01:19AM (1 child)
Obviously.
The PC didn't even exist back then, and every phone of today is more powerful than the first PC, let alone the computers that existed back then. And without such a powerful computer, the cloud would be useless. Not to mentiopn that the cloud certainly consists of many more than 5 computers, too. The servers at in the cloud are still computers, and you need them for every cloud service running on them.
First: Whether the computer you use is standing at your home is secondary; thanks to the internet you can use a computer that's across the globe; yet it still has to stand somewhere. Second: Define "general purpose computer". If you mean a machine that is not locked down, then you might be right. But if you mean a machine that in principle is able to run arbitrary code (even if you have to get it on your computer through an "app store"), I think you're as wrong as you can be. Unless you consider "almost everyone" as "some". Oh, and gamers will even continue to demand very powerful computers in their homes (though they may not refer to them as "computers" but as "consoles").
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:48PM
Well, I guess I could make due with https://www.youtube.com/embed/hB6eY73sLV0 [youtube.com] :/
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday November 16 2017, @03:17AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.