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[ChouGoku]

A team of Australian engineers has proven—with the highest score ever obtained—that a quantum version of computer code can be written, and manipulated, using two quantum bits in a silicon microchip. The advance removes lingering doubts that such operations can be made reliably enough to allow powerful quantum computers to become a reality.

Physicists have since struggled to establish a clear boundary between our everyday world—which is governed by classical physics—and this strangeness of the quantum world. For the past 50 years, the best guide to that boundary has been a theorem called Bell's Inequality, which states that no local description of the world can reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics.
Bell's Inequality demands a very stringent test to verify if two particles are actually entangled, known as the 'Bell test', named for the British physicist who devised the theorem in 1964.
"The key aspect of the Bell test is that it is extremely unforgiving: any imperfection in the preparation, manipulation and read-out protocol will cause the particles to fail the test," said Dr Juan Pablo Dehollain, a UNSW Research Associate who with Dr Stephanie Simmons was a lead author of the Nature Nanotechnology paper.
"Nevertheless, we have succeeded in passing the test, and we have done so with the highest 'score' ever recorded in an experiment," he added.

"Passing the Bell test with such a high score is the strongest possible proof that we have the operation of a quantum computer entirely under control," said Morello. "In particular, we can access the purely-quantum type of code that requires the use of the delicate quantum entanglement between two particles."

"Now, we have shown beyond any doubt that we can write this code inside a device that resembles the silicon microchips you have on your laptop or your mobile phone. It's a real triumph of electrical engineering," he added.

Full article here

So I think this is pretty big right? They basically do quantum codes in modified chips like the ones in our cell phones or computers. IIRC these type of things can only be done in laboratory settings with fairly rare materials; and not only can they do it with more common materials but with better results than the rare materials.

 

[ElTorro]

From talks I had with quantum computing researchers, implementing qbits is not really the most pressing issue right now. The custom qubit implementations are not even that expensive relative to other custom research settings. (~10000-20000€, IIRC) It's how to scale up the number of qubits into the numbers necessary to industrially build a meaningful quantum processor and integrate them with traditional silicon transistors on a single chip.

 

[OEM]

So good.

Man I fear of dying, because I don't want to die without seeing these devices. Just imagine the possibilities with Quantum computer.

 

[M0nochromatic]

I always enjoy reading about breakthroughs like this, but I understand absolutely nothing about quantum anything. The applications will be wonderful, but the science behind it is entangling.

 

[ElTorro]

I always enjoy reading about breakthroughs like this, but I understand absolutely nothing about quantum anything. The applications will be wonderful, but the science behind it is entangling.

Literally.

 

[oreomunsta]

Literally.

There is no uncertainty as to how great this is

 

[DiipuSurotu]

There is no uncertainty as to how great this is

Agreed. It's a major leap forward.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Agreed. It's a major leap forward.

Hahaha thank you. This made my day.

 

[WordAssassin]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

 

[Mikey Jr.]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

You can finally run crysis on high settings.

Spoiler

I have no idea

 

[Orbis Tabula]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

As far as I understand it (and I only have a hobbyist level understanding) it's not so much that computers will become more great at doing things they already do well, but moreso that quantum computers could do better at things that computers currently do poorly on. Factoring of large numbers is the commonly cited example.

Take a number like 34 and it doesn't take long to notice that it can be factored into the primes 17 and 2. But take a larger number like 188640373 and it's not immediately obvious what the prime factors are. Conventional computers will tell you it's 919*205267, but it takes a long time with our best algorithms, and it only grows more complicated as you pick larger primes. However, Quantum computers can do these problems much quicker if you use the correct algorithm.

That's just one example of how quantum computers would be better than conventional ones. There are other classes of problems that would also work well, but that's a common example because factorization of large prime numbers figures in to a lot of the cryptography we still use today. Widespread quantum computer would require looking into new encryption standards.

 

[SymbiantXenos]

Agreed. It's a major leap forward.

Oh boy.

 

[ElTorro]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

In traditional physics, exponential growth is naturally limited very quickly. So if you have a computational problem whose need for computing resources grows exponentially with the size of the problem (like the length of the number you want to factorize) then you are screwed.

But quantum computers perform computations in exponentially many parallel universes simultaneously.

That alone sounds pretty rad.

 

[brainchild]

I always enjoy reading about breakthroughs like this, but I understand absolutely nothing about quantum anything. The applications will be wonderful, but the science behind it is entangling.

Literally.

There is no uncertainty as to how great this is

Agreed. It's a major leap forward.

LMAO


Anyway, time to say bye-bye to encrypted security!

 

[BraXzy]

I have absolute no clue about Quantum anything besides the name and the sciencey-ness of it.

What could a quantum machine do that modern day PC's can't?

 

[Napoleonthechimp]

I could've sworn that I heard about this before and not so long ago at that.

 

[Pokemaniac]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

This probably won't replace normal processors, but it will be added as a co-proceesor (possibly similar to a GPU) which can speed up certain types of computations.

 

[Air]

For those asking what we could do with a quantum computer here's a short essay I found:

First of all, if we have a quantum computer, it will be useful for scientists for conducting virtual experiments. Quantum computing started with Feynman’s observation that quantum systems are hard to model on a conventional computer. If we had a quantum computer, we could use it to model quantum systems. (This is known as “quantum simulation.”) For example, we could model the behavior of atoms and particles at unusual conditions (for example, very high energies that can be only created in the Large Hadron Collider) without actually creating those unusual conditions. Or we could model chemical reactions—because interactions among atoms in a chemical reaction is a quantum process.

Another use of quantum computers is searching huge amounts of data. Let’s say that we have a large phone book, ordered alphabetically by individual names (and not by phone numbers). If we wanted to find the person who has the phone number 6097348000, we would have to go through the whole phone book and look at every entry. For a phone book with one million phone numbers, it could take one million steps. In 1996, Lov Grover from Bell Labs discovered that a quantum computer would be able to do the same task with one thousand steps instead of one million.

More generally, quantum computers would be useful whenever we have to find something in a large amount of data: “a needle in a haystack”—whether this is the right phone number or something completely different.

Another example of that is if we want to find two equal numbers in a large amount of data. Again, if we have one million numbers, a classical computer might have to look at all of them and take one million steps. We discovered that a quantum computer could do it in a substantially smaller amount of time.

All of these achievements of quantum computing are based on the same effects of quantum mechanics. On a high level, these are known as quantum parallelism and quantum interference.

https://www.ias.edu/ias-letter/ambainis-quantum-computing

It's pretty thorough, haven't read all of it, but skimmed a large chunk. P good.

 

[brainchild]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

I have absolute no clue about Quantum anything besides the name and the sciencey-ness of it.

What could a quantum machine do that modern day PC's can't?

A single quantum chip can be a super computer at brute forcing calculations. This means crunching data for simulations that can advance and improve the fields of the following:

- Aerospace (by testing the safety of space flight)
- Medicine (by profiling molecules to find cures)
- Astronomy (by analyzing/interpreting space data)
- Chemistry (by testing the efficacy of drugs)
- Biology (by analyzing complex bio-processes)
- Economy (by providing better statistical models)
- Meteorology (by predicting weather more accurately)
- Computer Science (by giving GPUs and CPUs exponential rendering and simulation capabilities)

and many, many more fields. The possibilities are endless. So much stagnation in technology and innovation today is due to the lack of time and resources, which would be a non-issue for quantum computers.

 

[SymbiantXenos]

So at 36 years young I've at least half a chance of seeing some form of a quantum computer if I live long enough?

 

[Glowsquid]

LMAO


Anyway, time to say bye-bye to encrypted security!

i'm clueless about security measures

is there any viable alternative to encription for passwords, etc?

 

[brainchild]

i'm clueless about security measures

is there any viable alternative to encription for passwords, etc?

Viable? Not in terms of anything that's actually been invented. But there are theoretical alternatives that could provide security in a world of quantum computing (like post-quantum cryptography).

The most promising post-quantum encryption method seems to be Supersingular Isogeny Diffie–Hellman Key Exchange. It maintains forward secrecy, so even if an encryption is compromised, all previous encryptions using this method remain secure.

In the end, this is all theoretical, and we won't know how effective these methods are until they can actually be tested against quantum computers that have been designed to break them.

 

[Glowsquid]

Viable? Not in terms of anything that's actually been invented. But there are theoretical alternatives that could provide security in a world of quantum computing (like post-quantum cryptography).

The most promising post-quantum encryption method seems to be Supersingular Isogeny Diffie–Hellman Key Exchange. It maintains forward secrecy, so even if an encryption is compromised, all previous encryptions using this method remain secure.

In the end, this is all theoretical, and we won't know how effective these methods are until they can actually be tested against quantum computers that have been designed to break them.

Cool, thanks for educating me.

 

[Pryce]

whoops.

 

[Pryce]

So if this goes forward, how many decades until this is in the public?

Spoiler

I know nothing about this.

 

[Tesseract]

accuracy and precision together at last

u r my 0nly 1

 

[RSTEIN]

I wonder how users in Copenhagen with interpret this breakthrough.

 

[ElTorro]

I wonder how users in Copenhagen with interpret this breakthrough.

They will ignore it so that they don't have to commit to an opinion.

 

[AngryNapkin]

Pretty sure the US government will have this first for at least a few years. Should be able to accomplish world domination in that amount of time.

 

[gaugebozo]

For those asking what we could do with a quantum computer here's a short essay I found:

For example, we could model the behavior of atoms and particles at unusual conditions (for example, very high energies that can be only created in the Large Hadron Collider)

Great article.

I'm not a quantum computing expert, but im pretty sure they wouldn't be able to do specifically that quote. The types of calculations done for the LHC are fundamentally different from simulations that could be done using just a few qubits.

The LHC calculations use theories based on quantum fields, not normal quantum mechanics. For mechanics, you only need to describe the position of a particle (x,y,z) at each point in time. Field theories describe a variable like one of the three components of the Electric field at each point in time and at each point in space. In order to do this, you'd need lots and lots of qubits for a good simulation.

I'm sure there would be advances in speed of doing the calculations, but simulations seem extremely far off for particle physics.

 

[100ppp]

I could've sworn that I heard about this before and not so long ago at that.

That's because it hasnt been that long ago...

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?p=181252732

 

[opticalmace]

A single quantum chip can be a super computer at brute forcing calculations. This means crunching data for simulations that can advance and improve the fields of the following:

- Aerospace (by testing the safety of space flight)
- Medicine (by profiling molecules to find cures)
- Astronomy (by analyzing/interpreting space data)
- Chemistry (by testing the efficacy of drugs)
- Biology (by analyzing complex bio-processes)
- Economy (by providing better statistical models)
- Meteorology (by predicting weather more accurately)
- Computer Science (by giving GPUs and CPUs exponential rendering and simulation capabilities)

and many, many more fields. The possibilities are endless. So much stagnation in technology and innovation today is due to the lack of time and resources, which would be a non-issue for quantum computers.

Nice post. I find "space data" amusing though, just had to say.

 

[Elaugaufein]

From talks I had with quantum computing researchers, implementing qbits is not really the most pressing issue right now. The custom qubit implementations are not even that expensive relative to other custom research settings. (~10000-20000€, IIRC) It's how to scale up the number of qubits into the numbers necessary to industrially build a meaningful quantum processor and integrate them with traditional silicon transistors on a single chip.

Yep, pretty much. Existing quantum computers (at least those commercial available) can generally only solve problems that are fairly trivial to solve with conventional computers anyway because the limited number of qbits greatly limits the number of things you can encode, they are algorithmicaly much faster for those problems but there's not a lot of use for solving NP problems in linear or constant time when you're constrained to toy problems that can be bruteforced in fractions of a seconds anyway. Especially since due to the nature of quantum computing you have to verify the answer anyway (since there's a reasonable chance it'll be incorrect) and possibly run it a couple of times to get the actual answer. This is still theoretically much much faster once you actually get a decent number of qbits/large enough n though since while P != NP holds checking a solution is much easier than finding one for NP-complete problems.

 

[ibyea]

Great article.

I'm not a quantum computing expert, but im pretty sure they wouldn't be able to do specifically that quote. The types of calculations done for the LHC are fundamentally different from simulations that could be done using just a few qubits.

The LHC calculations use theories based on quantum fields, not normal quantum mechanics. For mechanics, you only need to describe the position of a particle (x,y,z) at each point in time. Field theories describe a variable like one of the three components of the Electric field at each point in time and at each point in space. In order to do this, you'd need lots and lots of qubits for a good simulation.

I'm sure there would be advances in speed of doing the calculations, but simulations seem extremely far off for particle physics.

I think the article there is assuming if they had a good quantum computer.

 

[raphier]

As far as I understand it (and I only have a hobbyist level understanding) it's not so much that computers will become more great at doing things they already do well, but moreso that quantum computers could do better at things that computers currently do poorly on. Factoring of large numbers is the commonly cited example.

Take a number like 34 and it doesn't take long to notice that it can be factored into the primes 17 and 2. But take a larger number like 188640373 and it's not immediately obvious what the prime factors are. Conventional computers will tell you it's 919*205267, but it takes a long time with our best algorithms, and it only grows more complicated as you pick larger primes. However, Quantum computers can do these problems much quicker if you use the correct algorithm.

That's just one example of how quantum computers would be better than conventional ones. There are other classes of problems that would also work well, but that's a common example because factorization of large prime numbers figures in to a lot of the cryptography we still use today. Widespread quantum computer would require looking into new encryption standards.

Bits are made of 0 and 1's. Qubits allow more states than that.

 

[ChouGoku]

Yep, pretty much. Existing quantum computers (at least those commercial available) can generally only solve problems that are fairly trivial to solve with conventional computers anyway because the limited number of qbits greatly limits the number of things you can encode, they are algorithmicaly much faster for those problems but there's not a lot of use for solving NP problems in linear or constant time when you're constrained to toy problems that can be bruteforced in fractions of a seconds anyway. Especially since due to the nature of quantum computing you have to verify the answer anyway (since there's a reasonable chance it'll be incorrect) and possibly run it a couple of times to get the actual answer. This is still theoretically much much faster once you actually get a decent number of qbits/large enough n though since while P != NP holds checking a solution is much easier than finding one for NP-complete problems.

So isn't this a big fucking deal, What this article said is that these scientists ran code that a classical computer cannot, and with a higher score than any commercially available quantum computer. All on slightly modified regular silicon chips that we find in our laptops and cell phones.

 

[Elaugaufein]

So isn't this a big fucking deal, What this article said is that these scientists ran code that a classical computer cannot, and with a higher score than any commercially available quantum computer. All on slightly modified regular silicon chips that we find in our laptops and cell phones.

All quantum computers can run code that a classical computer can't (it wouldn't be a quantum computer if it couldn't), its like the difference between being able to teleport and drive at 5000 km/hr , it just doesn't make much practical difference when you can only travel 3 metres.

As you can tell from the score it isn't new its just the best found so far.

As a step on the road to practical quantum computing its important yes but this isn't going to be breaking standard modern encryption any time soon.

 

[WordAssassin]

Explaination

More explaination

Even more

and more

Thank you all very much! So it's not necessarily something that will make personal computing radically different, but it will help in big ways for science stuff? That still pretty dang sweet.

Plus I imagine the ability to put it into silicon is a huge feat in itself.

 

[Calabi]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

It means the first person to get a fully functional quantum computer could hack anything that uses a traditional password of just about any length in next to no time. If companies havent transitioned to quantum encryption by then, the internet is going to be torn up(destroyed?).

 

[oxrock]

So for someone who has no idea what this means, can someone... explain it in simple terms?

I get that it means super powerful computing is possible but how does that... affect the consumer end of things? Are we talking just like ridiculously fast computers or does it mean something even more?

I could be wrong as I don't fully understand this stuff (or hardly at all) but from my understanding, you're not limited to computing only one thing at a time like we are now. Let's use brute forcing passwords as an example. A common way now might be to run a for /while loop that creates and checks combinations to see if they work. This loop depending on the complexity of the password might have to run for a hundred years before actually cracking the password. With a quantum processor however it might be possible to check all the different possibilities at once thus instantly giving the correct password in a single calculation as opposed to near infinite calculations with our current processing methods.

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

Cheers to everyone droppin the knowledge.


This sounds incredible for the advancement of everything.

 

[Principate]

It means the first person to get a fully functional quantum computer could hack anything that uses a traditional password of just about any length in next to no time. If companies havent transitioned to quantum encryption by then, the internet is going to be torn up(destroyed?).

That was litterally the plot of Jormungang.

Anyway holy shit this is massive news, as an engineer, lawd good lawd.

 

[God Dayumm]

Thank you all very much! So it's not necessarily something that will make personal computing radically different, but it will help in big ways for science stuff? That still pretty dang sweet.

Plus I imagine the ability to put it into silicon is a huge feat in itself.

We might finally integrate quantum mechanics in our vydiagames and simulate a big bang and creation of a universe

 

[OminoMichelin]

This was posted back in october, wasn't it? Still excited for this.

 

[Napoleonthechimp]

This was posted back in october, wasn't it? Still excited for this.

Yes:

That's because it hasnt been that long ago...

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?p=181252732