USC reseachers find that Google’s Quantum Computer is the Be Real Thing (Almost)

[Bill USA]

... fascinating!

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/d-wave-quantum-computer-usc/

The D-Wave computer housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center in
Marina del Rey, California. Photo: Mae Ryan/Wired



Google bought one. So did Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defense contractors. But we still can’t agree on what it is they bought.

D-Wave, the company that built the thing, calls it the world’s first quantum computer, a seminal creation that foretells the future of mathematical calculation. But many of the world’s experts see it quite differently, arguing the D-Wave machine is something other than the computing holy grail the scientific community has sought since the mid-1980s.

No doubt, the argument will continue. But today, researchers at the University of Southern California published a paper that comes that much closer to showing the D-Wave is indeed a quantum computer. USC houses and operates the D-Wave system owned by Lockheed, and the researchers — led by Daniel Lidar, a professor of electrical engineering, chemistry, and physics — say they have at least shown the machine is not using a computing model known as “simulated annealing,” which obeys the laws of classical physics (the physics of everyday life) rather than the more elusive properties of quantum physics.

“[Our research] rules out one type of classical model that has been argued as a proper description of the D-Wave machine,” Lidar says. “A lot of people thought that when D-Wave came on the market their machine was just doing that, [but] we ruled that out.”
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... and some more background:

Google Buys Quantum Computer for Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA
http://singularityhub.com/2013/06/05/google-buys-quantum-computer-for-artificial-intelligence-lab-at-nasa/

To some of us, wicked fast quantum computers seem like the stuff of theory and some far off future. Not so if you work at Google or NASA. In a sign the technology is creeping closer to practical use, Google, NASA, and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association (USRA) recently announced formation of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab and seeded it with a brand new 512-qubit D-Wave Two quantum computer.

Quantum computers promise to be orders of magnitude faster than classical computers and far better at the “optimization problems” associated with machine learning—improving not only Google search but perhaps ushering in the kind of “creative problem solving” humans associate with intelligence.

Each D-Wave quantum computer is housed in a 10’ featureless black cabinet. Inside the box, an apparatus hangs from the ceiling like a high-tech stalactite. A niobium chip resides in the tip and is cooled to a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero, at which point it becomes a superconductor. But apart from being colder than deep space, the way the computer itself functions differs from the classical model.

Classical computers solve problems by systematically switching transistors “on” (1) and “off” (0). Quantum computers use qubits to represent both classical states (0 and 1) plus an in between state enabled by a weird quantum property physicists call “superposition.” In superposition, the qubit is both 0 and 1 at the same time, allowing the system to consider multiple problems simultaneously.
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[PoliticAverse]

1. So they built this machine and they think they know what it is doing but they aren't sure...

"He’s careful to say that he and his team have not proven that the D-Wave uses quantum annealing, but the system certainly appears to use it."

More background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems

[cantbeserious]

2. Kick And Recommend

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