New Step Towards The Quantum Computer

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Two Qubits In Action, New Step Towards The Quantum Computer.



Science Daily — Researchers at Delft University of Technology have succeeded in carrying out calculations with two quantum bits, the building blocks of a possible future quantum computer. The Delft researchers are publishing an article about this important step towards a workable quantum computer in this week's issue of Nature.


Superconducting rings on a chip. (Credit: TU Delft)

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[timmathews.com]

Thats pretty tight. I remember my 486 SX 25... It came with 8MB Ram, and I bought a 16MB chip from Best B... I thought I was big pimping then, now I have a 2.93 Ghz core 2 duo extreme with 4 gigs of ram... And yet I still complain about how slow our computers are... The faster they get, the more resources sw will use...

[tomcatuk]

Uh-oh. I though quantum computing meant machines that are self aware, launch all the nukes and take over the world. Sure I saw that somewhere.

Tim - notice how we've moved through several new chip architectures, and operating systems since the eighties, yet minesweeper ran faster then than it does now. Or maybe it's just me.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by timmathews.com

Thats pretty tight. I remember my 486 SX 25... It came with 8MB Ram, and I bought a 16MB chip from Best B... I thought I was big pimping then, now I have a 2.93 Ghz core 2 duo extreme with 4 gigs of ram... And yet I still complain about how slow our computers are... The faster they get, the more resources sw will use...

You will always as long as there is a delay between the hit of the mouse and what you see on the screen. If you know the simple Fibonacci sequence where term i is computed like:

Term(i) = Term(i-1) + Term(i-2) and you use recursive function calls (a function that calls itself), I think that after a few terms in the sequence it will take years to compute the next step, because the stack is filled up. Though, that will not happen if you use dynamic programming.

Even if you have all the computing power in the universe, you would not be able to compute PI since PI is trancendental.

This is not a problem for most of us, but for

• economists with world trade models of millions of equations
• weather forcasters with high dimensional chaotics systems
• astronomes
• SE's (especially real time)

this will always be a problem, and I mean always for those problems that need infinite precision.

My favourite is a Power Mach, but I still use my more than 5 years old computer with XP, 2.7 GHz processor and 1 Gb ram.

I am sure that somebody will buy that computer when it is lanunched and use it for word processing. Now my priority is to fix my IBM A21 PS/II 386 with OS II Warp and Simula. One of the Warp disks is destroyed and I have lost the two cables (no standard as far as I remember), to the power outlet and to the screen. Can somebody at WPW help me?

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I do'nt want to distact from the Nano\Quantum message, but

486 SX 25... It came with 8MB Ram

was luxury....

I had an Sinclar ZX80 1K RAM, 4K ROM...

[tomcatuk]

Holy Moly - a "mines SMALLER than yours" discussion!

Can't beat you - my first one was a Dragon 32. 32 whole kilobytes. And a noisy cassette deck to load software from. Ah the happy hours listening to the screaching sound, only to be told the program failed to load after all.

Have, however got an 8088 CPU in a bag full of old chips somewhere.

[TrafficProducer]

The Quantum Computer:

These developments appear to be mainly Lab Based.

New ideas that are being put together will need, or result, in new ways of computers actually running programs and storing data.

This should overcome the problem that most computers have to day which is known as Von Neumann bottleneck

While such developments may appear a long way off, (in the future), Nanotechnology is developing at a fast speed and practical shop bought items could be soon seen on the shop shelves.

Maybe things will go so fast that I wounder if this will overtake moore's law - Google Search

[kgun]

Originally Posted by tomcatuk

Holy Moly - a "mines SMALLER than yours" discussion!

Can't beat you - my first one was a Dragon 32. 32 whole kilobytes. And a noisy cassette deck to load software from. Ah the happy hours listening to the screaching sound, only to be told the program failed to load after all.

Have, however got an 8088 CPU in a bag full of old chips somewhere.

Ok if that is the discussion, here is "mine" first. Back in 1984, I returned to the research department of the central bank of Norway and was the first to get a PC in that department, since we used IBM Mainframes for most of our jobs.


The Computer was an IBM Personal Computer/AT

"The IBM Personal Computer/AT, more commonly known as the IBM AT and also sometimes called the PC AT or PC/AT, was IBM's second-generation PC, designed around the 6 MHz Intel 80286microprocessor and released in 1984 as model number 5170. Because the AT used various technologies that were new at the time in personal computers, the name AT originally stood for Advanced Technology, and indeed, the Intel 80286 processor used in the AT supported Protected mode. IBM later released an 8 MHz version of the AT".

See also:

Chronology of IBM Personal Computers.

It mainly replaced our dumb Tektronix terminals and was used to run Word Trade Models (interlinking country specific models via the current account) by calling a number in Holland and connecting to supercomputers in the USA via a sattelite.

I think that today it is possible to run these models on a laptop.

The problem is that there are too much foccus on hardware and too little on algorithms. By having the best algorithms you can beat a supercomputer (on specific problems not requiring large primary (memory) and secondary (harddisk(s)) storage).

The reason that I may buy a Power Mac, is that it is best on multimedia, and my youngest daughter claims that a PC with Windows moviemaker is not good enough.

Today I watched a movie she has just made. Very impressing step forward from the clips she has made with the camera on her Mobile phone. But she had to admit, that the biggest problem may be the resolution of the video camera. So I am not sure that she needs a Power Mach with Adobe Premier Pro.

My advice to her in order of priority:

1. Take a prefessional course in making movies.
2. Get a better video camera.
3. Then decide on computer software / hardware.

Have you ever gone with a woman to a shopping center? Aside from that you need infinite monetary resources, you can get good investment advice by looking at the shops she visits that may be potential investment candidates.

Private (moralizing) Message:
If you have limited financial resources, don't follow the front on computer hardware. It may be better to use more money on some books and / or education.

P.S.
Great info and link as usual.

Do you think that will be a better multimedia computer than the Power Mac? The Power Mac is now some years old, constantly upgraded, but perhaps ready to be replaced.

Intersting link to article published: Date:September 13, 2001 on the same page:

Quantum Computer Could Solve Problems In A Few Months That Would Take Conventional Computers Millions Of Years

"A quantum computer could solve problems in a few months that would take conventional computers millions of years, Chong said.

Quantum physics describes the special rules that apply to atoms and subatomic particles. One principle is that when you observe a particle, you change it. If a particle can be in one of two states, for example "up" or "down," it only settles on one state when you look at it. Before you look at it, it can be in both states at the same time.

Conventional computers process information as "bits." A bit can be a one or a zero. A string of eight bits can represent a single number from zero (00000000) to 255 (11111111). In a quantum computer, bits can be both one and zero at the same time. A string of eight bits can therefore represent all of the numbers between zero and 255 at the same time".

My bolding. Cryptic to understand how that is used in the chip.

So there may be some Quantum computers out there already, finding larger prime numbers that are used in en(de)cryption or finding more digit's in PI