Items tagged with quantum computer
Researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) have announced that they have created a new material that is a key step in creating the next generation of supercomputers. These next-generation quantum computers will be far faster than current supercomputers while consuming much less energy. The scientists on the project work in the OSU College of Science and the compound they have developed is an inorganic material that adopts a crystal structure. The material is capable of sustaining a new state of matter that is known as quantum spin liquid. That new compound is lithium osmium oxide and it has osmium atoms that form a honeycomb-like lattice, and can enforce a phenomenon called "magnetic...
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Back in September, we talked about the groundwork Microsoft was laying for quantum computing with a new programming language in development. Not even three months later, Microsoft is ready to toss a free preview version of that new language to the public and it's called the Quantum Development Kit. That dev kit includes the Q# programming language, a quantum computing simulator, and other resources for people who want to write apps for quantum computers. From left, Charles Marcus, Krysta Svore, Leo Kouwenhoven and Michael Freedman are leading Microsoft’s quantum computing efforts. Photo by Brian Smale. The Q# programming language was built from the ground up specifically for quantum...
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Quantum computing is often seen as the "holy grail" when it comes to the next logical progression in processing performance. Companies like Google and Intel are currently developing quantum computers, and industry stalwart IBM just announced today that it has produced a machine that is able to process 50 quantum bits (qubits). The machine is currently in the "operational prototype" stage, which means that it is still quite far off from commercial use. But, what exactly is a quantum computer? Our modern computers process ones and zeros, whereas quantum computers can represent ones, zeros or both (at the same time) as qubits commingle in entanglement and superposition states. This peculiarly...
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Microsoft and other major tech firms around the world are working hard towards the next breakthrough in computing, something many pinning their hopes on quantum computing. One of Microsoft's top researchers, Michael Freedman, has been with the company for twenty years and has put Microsoft on the path to build the first topological qubit. A topological qubit is a robust type of quantum bit that Microsoft hopes will serve as the basis for a scalable, general purpose quantum computer system. The discovery of this qubit would also be a major breakthrough in quantum physics as well. "We’re seeing the potential foundation for a new, revolutionary technology," said Todd Holmdahl, the Microsoft corporate...
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It may still be in the early days for quantum computers, but Google is already experimenting with post-quantum cryptography. Someone could potentially retroactively break any communications that were encrypted with today’s standard encryption algorithms. Google is attempting to encrypt some of its connections through post-quantum cryptography to avoid this possible problem. Google remarked, “Our aims with this experiment are to highlight an area of research that Google believes to be important and to gain real-world experience with the larger data structures that post-quantum algorithms will likely require.” Google is utilizing the New Hope algorithm which was designed by Erdem Alkim, Léo...
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Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association have announced that they'll collaborate in purchasing the second $10 million dollar D-Wave Two quantum computing system on the market. The system will deploy to NASA's Ames Research Center, and should be online by the fall of this year, where it'll be put to work solving particular types of problems. Before we delve into that, let's talk a bit about what a quantum computer is -- and what it isn't. Quantum Annealment A quantum computer is a computer that uses quantum information to store data. In a classical computer, data is stored electrically, via a 0 (off) or a 1 (on). Quantum bits (called Qubits) can exist in a superposition of...
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Over the past couple of weeks, a company names D-Wave Systems made some news after announcing that they had developed what was supposedly the world's first commercial quantum computer. And now D-Wave's claims have come under fire because they've failed to submit their findings for peer review. This story on CNN Tech discusses some of the finer details of the situation. "Quantum computing is such an elusive goal that even the company claiming to have the "world's first commercial quantum computer" acknowledged it isn't entirely sure the machine is performing true quantum calculations. And independent quantum computing researchers said they are dubious of some of the claims made...
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We've all heard of bits and bytes. Ever hear of a qubit? So it goes like this. Bits, as we traditionally know them, are either in a 1 or 0 state. Right, well, a qubit exists in a quantum state. So for example, it can be either 1 or 0 or both or somewhere in between. This is the crux of quantum computing. Sufficiently confused? What if we told you a quantum computer or a system built with a quantum computing 16 qubit engine could carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously in parallel universes? Oh and a machine built with a hundreds of qubits processing engine could calculate more operations than there are atoms in the universe......
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