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?
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IBM Plans to Commercialize 58-Qubit Quantum Computer
Norishige Morimoto, Director of IBM Research in Tokyo and global vice president at IBM, said that IBM intends to commercialize quantum computers within 3-5 years, when he expects quantum computers to outperform supercomputers in specific domains.
[...] The company's latest System Q One quantum computing system has a 20-qubit quantum processor with a quantum volume of 16. Quantum volume is a quantum computing performance metric IBM believes is more accurate than just using qubits alone. Quantum volume uses a combination of the number of qubits and error rate to determine the real-world performance of a quantum processor. The company is currently giving others free and paid access to its existing quantum computers.
IBM, Google and others have said before that to achieve quantum supremacy, a quantum computer needs at least 50 qubits. Morimoto said that IBM plans to launch a next-generation 58-qubit quantum computer that can outperform supercomputers and thus are suitable for commercialization.
However, don't expect to own one of these any time soon, as they will require a working environment with a temperature of -273 degrees Celsius to protect the qubits from interference. As such, IBM believes that this sort of quantum computer will work best as a companion to classical supercomputers.
Room temperature or bust.
Previously: IBM Announces Working Prototype of a 50-Qubit Quantum Computer
IBM Announces its First Commercially Available Quantum Computer (20 qubits)
IBM's New Quantum Computer Will Have You Drooling
(Score: 3, Interesting) by exaeta on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:09AM (8 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:24AM (1 child)
Get some real dollars from sales, while being, by the admission of its own manufacturer, not much of a computer.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:19PM
IBM still bends people over for renting hardware from them in the classical computer world. It would be hard to imagine them charging *more* obscene amounts for this.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:44AM (1 child)
Found the techie who didnt care about college!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @06:36PM
Found the poster who didn't care about reality.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday January 10 2019, @04:36AM (2 children)
I can't wrap my head around how to program a quantum computer and I've done some reading and watched some lectures. I don't feel too bad though because even quantum computer programmers admit it is difficult to construct a program to answer a question when the program has to have the answer inside it and you don't know it yet.
Lets see a classical computer explode a head like that! Deadlocks and race conditions? Pfffft.
Fuck those things are weird.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:44PM (1 child)
Have you tried the online IBM Q stuff? Lots of info, plus opportunity for actual hands-on-ish experimentation there. If I ever get inspired enough I'd like to take the time to implement one of the superposition examples, just to see it happen.
Also, if you read just a bit in the FAQ, you'll find quite a bit of debunking about the speedup potential - there's reference to an algorithm that's O^N in classical computers that can be reduced to O^N/2 by quantum methods, but that's about as good as it gets.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @08:26PM
Shor's Algorithm -- factoring integers in polynomial time.
Fortunately the size of the integers to be factored is bound by the number of qubits. But we should be rethinking our public-key cryptography methods regardless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:27AM (3 children)
Wouldn't like to do business or science on either of those, actually. :)
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:49AM (1 child)
I remember upgrading the memory in Trash 80s in high school, model IIIs I think it was. Good times.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday January 10 2019, @04:52PM
I remember having someone who worked at Intel volunteered to install the chips to raise my TRS-80 Model III from 16K to 48K to support the two new Seagate 5 1/4 inch drives I'd gotten. Been playing around with Sharp 80 lately to both remember the stuff I spent hours and hours doing and explore a couple of titles I always wanted but couldn't afford.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:47PM
TRS-80s had passed the threshold to usefulness in small-ish office settings, mostly as word processors and database interfaces. ENIAC was more of use to very large institutions.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:27AM (5 children)
So, it's not ready for prime time gaming. Or, to fight WWVI for us. Or, to take us to Alpha Centauri, and beyond. Or, even to
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:49AM (4 children)
I would have thought there would be more appreciation for developing science around here. This is like someone selling the first transistor but it only works for a few seconds. Why shit on this when they expicitly state it isn't a consumer device? QC wasn't even in Back to the Future!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:10AM
Not trying to create flamebait, but you have seen stories around here on climate change, right? Appreciation of science only goes so far here if it doesn't accord with preconceived notions...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:44AM (2 children)
Appreciation for science should include marketing a product that is in very early pre-alpha? It seems that maybe they should have just solicited funds for further research, rather than sell a bill of goods.
There is the fact that whoever coughs up the cash for this pre-alpha will develop relations with IBM's development staff, offer feedback, and possibly steer engineering and development decisions to some limited extent. Still, that's a lot of money. But, megacorps don't value money in the same way that mere corporations or people do. Neither do governments.
I just kinda expect that a "computer" should be capable of running for a few hours at a time, if not longer. Even Windows manages that, most of the time.
There's a nine somewhere in the uptime values here. That nine trails perhaps several trillion zero's.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday January 10 2019, @04:30AM
I'm not sure if you were referencing it or not but one of the very early computers if not the one Turing made after Bombe had a predicted MTBF in the scale of single digit hours. They were so desperate they built it anyway.
I don't think anyone's desperate enough to buy the IBM PS/Q where 100ns of computation is enough for anybody.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:59PM
I disagree.
This could be useful for CS departments to develop techniques for taking advantage of what computers like it can do. You have to have useful software tools together with the hardware to make the system useful, and this could help bootstrap the ecosystem while being used as a teaching or research tool.
Orgs with deep pockets that have a business case for the tech might wish to adopt early because of the potential advantage they see. This would help develop their applications in advance of the system being available so they can be a first mover as soon as one is, and they'll know what features it must have to be useful to them.
It is surely a tiny niche item though.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:47AM
Is that three strikes or a ball and two strikes?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:55PM (1 child)
No, they are complex things.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Friday January 11 2019, @12:49AM
That was excellent. I wonder how many people are going to get this.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 10 2019, @06:01PM
All I need is 1 billion dollars, a good marketing agent, and some computers.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"