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Good job, IBM. You may actually be ahead of other tech companies for once, although Google seems to be breathing down your neck in this area. Others seem to be
by mtgx 9y ago
Good job, IBM. You may actually be ahead of other tech companies for once, although Google seems to be breathing down your neck in this area. Others seem to be at least a generation or two behind.
One other thing to note is that until recently it was believed that 50-qubit quantum computer would achieve "quantum supremacy". However, IBM itself has shown that we can simulate 56-qubits on a classical supercomputer.
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2017/10/quantum-computing-barrier/ https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2017/10/quantum-computing...
Now let's see who gets to the 100-qubit quantum computer first and achieves quantum supremacy.
Going by recent developments, quantum computers seem to be following a "Moore's Law" of sorts, where their number of qubits pretty much double every two years. We need a few more generations to be sure of this, but it does look like this is the rate at which they are going to evolve.
D-Wave, which isn't a universal quantum computer, has in fact been evolving at 2-4x every 2 years (closer to 2x for last few generations).
This is exciting because unlike classical computers, quantum computers increase their performance by much more than 2x if their number of qubits double every 2 years.
- bencollier49 9y agoVery exciting, agree - although important to mention: > unlike classical computers, quantum computers increase their performance by much more than 2x ...for particular tasks.
- ISL 9y agoSome of those tasks are transformative!
- Cyph0n 9y ago> You may actually be ahead of other tech companies for once IBM Research is and always has been an industrial research powerhouse. I doubt you could name a company that has contributed so much to so many different fields over the past few decades (Bell Labs is the universal exception). From [1]: "IBM Research's numerous contributions to physical and computer sciences include the Scanning Tunneling Microscope and high temperature superconductivity, both of which were awarded the Nobel Prize. IBM Research was behind the inventions of the SABRE travel reservation system, the technology of laser eye surgery, magnetic storage, the relational database, UPC barcodes and Watson, the question-answering computing system that won a match against human champions on the Jeopardy! television quiz show." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research
- derwiki 9y ago> won a match against human champions on the Jeopardy! television quiz show. I'm _much_ more impressed by Google's AI Go champion. And besides Watson, what has IBM Research done in the past 20 years? Personally I would have thought they'd be more involved in self-driving cars. (Disclaimer: I interned for IBM Research 10 years ago)
- Cyph0n 9y agoIBM isn't a software-only company: they do research in advanced materials and semiconductor physics, low-level computer architecture, integrated circuit testing, and so on. When you look at the bigger picture, IBM Research has been doing amazing things.
- derwiki 9y agoWhat stands out to you in the last 20 years?
- Cyph0n 9y agoIBM has been awarded more patents per year than any other company for the last 24 years[1]. In 2016 alone, IBM published ~22 patents per day, and ended up being ~2500 patents ahead of Samsung (#2). [1]: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/51353.wss http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/51353.wss
- bob_theslob646 9y agoDoes that necessarily mean that is impressive?( I know it is, I am just asking for someone who may not understand what having that type of scale of IP enables a company to do.)
- derwiki 9y agoProtective war chest: don't sue me, I probably own a patent you're infringing upon. At least my lawyers will make it seem so.