Who is scared of the Big Bad Quantum Computer?
Today’s computers, on the whole operate on the principles of electricity. But since a team of international designers designed a ‘photonic chip’ that operates on the principle of light, this is due to change. Logic dictates that this processor would pave the way for the production of hyper-fast quantum computers. Quantum computers in the home are still a fair way off, but given that many researchers in this field had believed they would not be a reality for at least 25 years, recent progress has got us well on our way. Initially, early systems would be geared towards the type of advanced simulations that are run by physicists, medical researchers and climate modellers.
Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics in the Uk and project leader, Jeremy O’Brien, told the Financial Times:
“we can say with real confidence that, using our new technique, a quantum computer could, within five years, be performing calculations that are outside the capabilities of conventional computers.”
O’Brien went on to describe how:
“unlike an electronic ‘bit’ in conventional computing, the use of quantum particles, or ‘qubits,’ permits parallel computing on a scale that would not be possible with conventional electronics… [Now], there are several [working] models, [but] the Bristol version sends ‘entangled’ photons down networks of circuits in a silicon chip. The particles perform a co-ordinated ‘quantum walk,’ whose outcome represents the results of a calculation… Of course, special software and input-output devices will [eventually] have to be developed to make practical use of [such future] devices…”
Don’t confuse the Quantum computer with optical computers. The two developments are rather different.
The TEC-KNOW-HOW
Courtesy of www.wired.com: A Closeup of a silicon surface pockmarked with holes, designed to slow light passing through it. This "slow light" waveguide, designed by a team led by Yuri A. Vlasov of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, could be used as a buffer for optical signals and thus would be a crucial component of an optical (or "photonic") computer, or an all-optical network router.
An optical computer is slightly faster than current systems which utilise traditional CPU architectures. Current computers rely on electric circuits to build the basic logic gates (AND, OR, NOT), making use of transistors. The electric circuits pass the data between the transistors (the transistor modifies the signal appropriately, generally outputting a small or little higher voltage that correspond to the values 0 and 1.) An electric current is a flow of electrons, so our current computers are “electron” based. Optical computers aim to, instead of electrons and electric circuits, use photons for communication (implemented with lasers and optical fibre). The performance improvement of an optical computer comes from the fact that an electric current flows only at about 10% the speed of light, so about a factor of 10. There’s also some other advantages, quoting from wikipedia:
“Optical Computing has the main advantages of small size/high density, high speed, low heating of junctions and substrate, dynamically re-configurable, scalable into larger/smaller topologies/networks, well matched for Imaging, massively parallel computing capability and Artificial Intelligence applications i.e.- neural networks of great complexity.”
But a quantum computer. Is a speed monster. It uses Quantum principles, such as superposition and interference to dramatically improve performance. Generally a quantum computer would make use of qubits which have the nice property of having the value 0, 1 or both. A computer with n qubits, therefore, can be in a superposition of 2^n states, and a single computation on those n qubits (implemented perhaps using electromagnetic signals) would be a computation on the 2^n states. This means that, in order for a traditional computer to perform the equivalent of one computation by a quantum computer with n qubits, it would need 2^n computations. If n = 1000, in a fraction of a second a quantum computer can perform more computations than there are atoms in the universe.
Beneath are some photos of a computer designed and built by D-Wave. It is possibly a demoed quantum computer (or, at least, is built on some of the principles of quantum mechanics). Scientists are sceptical on the whole and even D-Wave is unsure! This Orion processor-powered computer has been unavailable to public or scientific examination and the D-wave website, while excellent, provides few details on its specifics. Whatever the case, it look awesome!
D-Wave Photos courtesy of Fast Cursor
It is an inevitable part of tech evolution - check the work of this Technion IIT graduate student! http://www.focus.technion.ac.il/May10/researchSto...
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