IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer
At CES, IBM today announced its first commercial quantum computer for use outside of the lab. The 20-qubit system combines into a single package the quantum and classical computing parts it takes to use a machine like this for research and business applications. That package, the IBM Q system, is still huge, of course, but it includes everything a company would need to get started with its quantum computing experiments, including all the machinery necessary to cool the quantum computing hardware.
While IBM describes it as the first fully integrated universal quantum computing system designed for scientific and commercial use, it's worth stressing that a 20-qubit machine is nowhere near powerful enough for most of the commercial applications that people envision for a quantum computer with more qubits — and qubits that are useful for more than 100 microseconds. It's no surprise then, that IBM stresses that this is a first attempt and that the systems are "designed to one day tackle problems that are currently seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classical systems to handle." Right now, we're not quite there yet, but the company also notes that these systems are upgradable (and easy to maintain).
Quantum computers are real things, right?
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Friday January 11 2019, @12:47AM
Thank you for the info. I totally see your point in playing with a superposition just for fun. It's not like I'm going to manage entangled photons any other way and basically playing with an entangled photon is ultra cool.
It reminds me of how I can use a machine to play with really really small time intervals: a micro controller and specifically the timer/counter unit. By writing simple programs you can play with time values down in the microseconds. Also very very cool.
I wonder how long it takes to get the atmega328p of quantum computers?