6 ms·

Does anyone know if this is just marketing or if they've actually solved the technical problem. If they have solved it, what's the ETA (months, years, decades)?

mtgx 9y ago
ETA 2022 until a 10-qubit silicon quantum computer prototype is made. I doubt it's just marketing. UNSW is the leading university in researching silicon quantum computers and one of the best in researching quantum computers in general, too.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  You cannot do anything interesting with 10 qubits. Anything you can do with 10 qubits will likely be faster on conventional computers. IBM says you need at least 50 before it gets interesting.
  - philipov 9y ago
    What interesting things happen at 50 qubits?
    - mtgx 9y ago
      We can prove that quantum computers are faster than classical computers at solving certain problems (like simulating atom interactions). Although IBM recently moved that goal post, and proved that we can simulate 56-qubit (and probably a little more than that) with classical supercomputers. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ibms-quantum-leap-simulates-56qubit-machine https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ibms-...
      - mathgenius 9y ago
        It's debatable how generic this 56-qubit simulation is. We can already "simulate" millions of qubits, with entanglement, as long as they dance in a particular way...
        mtgx 9y ago
        I figured as much. So whoever develops a 50-qubit quantum computer first (Google?) will have to prove that the same simulation can't be done with a supercomputer. And they'd need to be serious about it and use the latest research in classical simulation, including IBM's 56-qubit research to try and do it on a supercomputer. Otherwise, they may claim "quantum supremacy" and 3 months later someone else will prove that the same simulation can be done on a classical computer.
  - mtgx 9y ago
    I realize that, but I think after a 10-qubit chip is made, it will be easier to scale up. This tech is aiming to be "mainstream". Google, IBM and others' quantum computers will likely prove useful earlier, but we won't see them be paired with our personal computers. This on the other hand, offers that opportunity, but it will lag behind other types of quantum computers in terms of performance.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      I don't think we will get devices cooled by liquid helium at our homes in any short time. But this makes it possible to distribute them at more datacenters that can be much easier to reach than what Google and IBM are creating.
      - jabl 9y ago
        This is not my field, but IIRC dilution refrigerators capable of sub-K temperatures are nowadays available off the shelf from a number of commercial suppliers. Which is a pretty cool (har har!) advance considering not many decades ago labs had to create their own, at great expense. So in principle, there might not be any really fundamental issues preventing such things in every home, with mass production economies making them cheaper and more reliable. The real question IMHO is whether this will be useful in some way compared to just connecting over the internet to some data center running them.
        marcosdumay 9y ago
        Safety is a fundamental issue. Home appliances don't get the best maintenance available, and supercool and high-pressure containers aren't easy to keep around.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    Well, every new technology needs a proof of concept first.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    You can't do anything interesting with ENIAC, but you had to build those before you built anything else :^)
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      The people that built the ENIAC did it to solve actual problems.
qubex 9y ago
Uhm, without even RTFA, it’s a .edu.au domain, so an educational institution (in Australia), not a commercial venture, so presumably pretty immune from marketing hype. EDIT: sorry guys, I assumed the sarcasm would be transparent. Apologies.
- vosper 9y ago
  It's from the University 'Newsroom' department, and AFAIK these are pretty notorious for over-hyping University research. It essentially is a marketing department for the University.
  - qubex 9y ago
    Yes, sorry, as I mentioned to somebody else I though my sarcasm would be self-evident, but maybe I just dripped with too much caustic fluid... sorry.
- wbhart 9y ago
  I assume that was meant as a joke. Universities regularly put out utter nonsense in press releases (the marketing departments at universities are often ground zero for the most atrocious exaggerations that end up in the press). And I doubt universities in Australia are specially immune from this.
  - qubex 9y ago
    Yes it was meant as a joke but unfortunately my prose was a bit too deadpan, I edited it to add a warning, sorry.
wbhart 9y ago
I am not an expert, but my assessment is that it's pure marketing. They talk about needing millions of qubits to do useful computations. This is flat out false. Thousands will already solve interesting problems that no classical computer can currently solve, e.g. factoring RSA moduli. They also say that many qubits operating together will be required to build a practical quantum computer (true), and that their technology allows this (false). The problems involved in maintaining coherence and correcting errors, at reasonable operating temperatures do not boil down to how to fit multiple qubits on a silicon wafer. This is like saying a new process for manufacturing nuts and bolts will allow the construction of Boeing 747's. The paper may contain more sensible statements, but as usual, the press release is probably nonsense.
- fudged71 9y ago
  When I took a course on quantum computing in 2007 with a standford prof, he said that things would get interesting after we get to 128 qubits :)
  - wbhart 9y ago
    I guess someone will eventually introduce some kind of terminology like, "qubit equivalent". But I think that if you could build an error free 128 qubit machine, this would be interesting. But the main reason I see for that is if you can build one with 128 qubits, almost certainly someone with a lot more money than you, with a black budget, can build one much larger. The basic thrust of the article, and the paper, seems to be that if you can engineer a large enough quantum computer than doesn't really work, you can simulate one that doesn't exist. It's truly great if they are right, but I can't find a single statement about this paper on the entire web by an expert that is enthused about this announcement. The paper is short enough that there should be some comment by now.
    - mtgx 9y ago
      Someone has already done that: https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/resources/quantum-volume.pdf https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/resources/quantum-volume....
typon 9y ago
At some level, this is marketing hype. They have NOT "solved" quantum computing in the sense that a layman would expect: room temperature quantum integrated circuit able to give exponential speedup over classical algorithms. I would say the biggest innovation here is that they have made a silicon based integrated circuit with fault-tolerant qbits (using error-correction codes they invented).

mtgx 9y ago

ETA 2022 until a 10-qubit silicon quantum computer prototype is made. I doubt it's just marketing. UNSW is the leading university in researching silicon quantum computers and one of the best in researching quantum computers in general, too.

jcoffland 9y ago
You cannot do anything interesting with 10 qubits. Anything you can do with 10 qubits will likely be faster on conventional computers. IBM says you need at least 50 before it gets interesting.
- philipov 9y ago
  What interesting things happen at 50 qubits?
  - mtgx 9y ago
    We can prove that quantum computers are faster than classical computers at solving certain problems (like simulating atom interactions). Although IBM recently moved that goal post, and proved that we can simulate 56-qubit (and probably a little more than that) with classical supercomputers. https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ibms-quantum-leap-simulates-56qubit-machine https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ibms-...
    - mathgenius 9y ago
      It's debatable how generic this 56-qubit simulation is. We can already "simulate" millions of qubits, with entanglement, as long as they dance in a particular way...
      - mtgx 9y ago
        I figured as much. So whoever develops a 50-qubit quantum computer first (Google?) will have to prove that the same simulation can't be done with a supercomputer. And they'd need to be serious about it and use the latest research in classical simulation, including IBM's 56-qubit research to try and do it on a supercomputer. Otherwise, they may claim "quantum supremacy" and 3 months later someone else will prove that the same simulation can be done on a classical computer.
- mtgx 9y ago
  I realize that, but I think after a 10-qubit chip is made, it will be easier to scale up. This tech is aiming to be "mainstream". Google, IBM and others' quantum computers will likely prove useful earlier, but we won't see them be paired with our personal computers. This on the other hand, offers that opportunity, but it will lag behind other types of quantum computers in terms of performance.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    I don't think we will get devices cooled by liquid helium at our homes in any short time. But this makes it possible to distribute them at more datacenters that can be much easier to reach than what Google and IBM are creating.
    - jabl 9y ago
      This is not my field, but IIRC dilution refrigerators capable of sub-K temperatures are nowadays available off the shelf from a number of commercial suppliers. Which is a pretty cool (har har!) advance considering not many decades ago labs had to create their own, at great expense. So in principle, there might not be any really fundamental issues preventing such things in every home, with mass production economies making them cheaper and more reliable. The real question IMHO is whether this will be useful in some way compared to just connecting over the internet to some data center running them.
      - marcosdumay 9y ago
        Safety is a fundamental issue. Home appliances don't get the best maintenance available, and supercool and high-pressure containers aren't easy to keep around.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  Well, every new technology needs a proof of concept first.
- andrepd 9y ago
  You can't do anything interesting with ENIAC, but you had to build those before you built anything else :^)
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    The people that built the ENIAC did it to solve actual problems.

qubex 9y ago

Uhm, without even RTFA, it’s a .edu.au domain, so an educational institution (in Australia), not a commercial venture, so presumably pretty immune from marketing hype. EDIT: sorry guys, I assumed the sarcasm would be transparent. Apologies.

vosper 9y ago
It's from the University 'Newsroom' department, and AFAIK these are pretty notorious for over-hyping University research. It essentially is a marketing department for the University.
- qubex 9y ago
  Yes, sorry, as I mentioned to somebody else I though my sarcasm would be self-evident, but maybe I just dripped with too much caustic fluid... sorry.
wbhart 9y ago
I assume that was meant as a joke. Universities regularly put out utter nonsense in press releases (the marketing departments at universities are often ground zero for the most atrocious exaggerations that end up in the press). And I doubt universities in Australia are specially immune from this.
- qubex 9y ago
  Yes it was meant as a joke but unfortunately my prose was a bit too deadpan, I edited it to add a warning, sorry.

wbhart 9y ago

I am not an expert, but my assessment is that it's pure marketing. They talk about needing millions of qubits to do useful computations. This is flat out false. Thousands will already solve interesting problems that no classical computer can currently solve, e.g. factoring RSA moduli. They also say that many qubits operating together will be required to build a practical quantum computer (true), and that their technology allows this (false). The problems involved in maintaining coherence and correcting errors, at reasonable operating temperatures do not boil down to how to fit multiple qubits on a silicon wafer. This is like saying a new process for manufacturing nuts and bolts will allow the construction of Boeing 747's. The paper may contain more sensible statements, but as usual, the press release is probably nonsense.

fudged71 9y ago
When I took a course on quantum computing in 2007 with a standford prof, he said that things would get interesting after we get to 128 qubits :)
- wbhart 9y ago
  I guess someone will eventually introduce some kind of terminology like, "qubit equivalent". But I think that if you could build an error free 128 qubit machine, this would be interesting. But the main reason I see for that is if you can build one with 128 qubits, almost certainly someone with a lot more money than you, with a black budget, can build one much larger. The basic thrust of the article, and the paper, seems to be that if you can engineer a large enough quantum computer than doesn't really work, you can simulate one that doesn't exist. It's truly great if they are right, but I can't find a single statement about this paper on the entire web by an expert that is enthused about this announcement. The paper is short enough that there should be some comment by now.
  - mtgx 9y ago
    Someone has already done that: https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/resources/quantum-volume.pdf https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/resources/quantum-volume....

typon 9y ago

At some level, this is marketing hype. They have NOT "solved" quantum computing in the sense that a layman would expect: room temperature quantum integrated circuit able to give exponential speedup over classical algorithms. I would say the biggest innovation here is that they have made a silicon based integrated circuit with fault-tolerant qbits (using error-correction codes they invented).