https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ionq-trapped-ion-quantum-computer-google,38255.html
IonQ, one of many companies developing a quantum computer, has announced a new trapped ion quantum computer with 79 processing qubits. The company claims this quantum computer should beat Google's 72-qubit quantum computer, not just in terms of number of qubits, but also in total processing performance.
The IonQ trapped ion quantum computer was able to break a world record for a particular problem using the Bernstein-Vazirani Algorithm. This algorithm tests the ability of a computer to determine an encoded number, called an oracle, when allowed only a single yes/no question.
For a 10-bit oracle (a number between 0 and 1,023) a conventional computer succeeds 0.2 percent of the time. However, the IonQ quantum computer achieved a success rate of 73 percent. This is a better result than any other quantum computer has achieved so far.
IonQ's 79-qubit quantum computer has shown one and two-gate fidelity rates of 99.97 percent and 99.3 percent, respectively, which is significantly higher than the fidelity rates of competitors. The closest seems to be Google's 72-qubit quantum computer with a single-qubit gate fidelity of 99.9 percent and two-qubit gate fidelity rate of 99.4 percent.
(Score: 4, Funny) by EJ on Thursday January 03 2019, @12:43PM
It's a good thing I recently changed my password to 1024. I should be safe.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday January 03 2019, @02:09PM (1 child)
Of course, you could say that the reason that the quantum algorithm works is because the cheating is part of the quantum game, and that would be fair. This algorithm was specifically designed to exploit a quantum property to do something that is impossible clasically. But how come the quantum team is permitted to design a circuit that, given a secret 10 bit number, outputs 11 bits, but the classical team are not permitted to design a circuit that, given a secret 10 bit number, outputs 10 bits (don't need the extra one that the quantum one needs obviously)?
Not a fair comparison. (Which is why there's the exponential 'advantage', ones where quantum plays fair tend to have a polynomial (sqrt) advantage, not an exponential one.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday January 04 2019, @09:55AM
And a seven-year-old child who can count to a thousand has a success rate of 100 percent. It's not "a bit of a cheat", it's a total cheat.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @03:22AM
That 72 qubit Google processor does not exist at that fidelity. There was never a paper. The high IonQ fidelity happens when you load only two ions (two qubits) into the machine. With 79 qubits, they can only perform single qubit gates which is useless. It is truly an 11 qubit processor with modest fidelity, which is underwhelming, given that ion-based quantum computing has been under development by the best and brightest for 20 years.