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posted by martyb on Wednesday November 15 2017, @04:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the slowly-getting-a-little-bit-bigger dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 16 2017, @01:19AM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday November 16 2017, @01:19AM (#597540) Journal

    That quote crossed my mind when I wrote that post. But the thing is, was he wrong?

    Obviously.

    The PC is dying as appliances and the "cloud" are slowly taking over.

    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.

    I believe some people will keep having general purpose computers at home.

    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.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:48PM (#597764)

    a machine that in principle is able to run arbitrary code

    Well, I guess I could make due with https://www.youtube.com/embed/hB6eY73sLV0 [youtube.com] :/