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139 Comments
- killerofkiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+84a professor once told me, if you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand it.
- distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -3/+68wtf? This crappy article doesn't even say what they did to demonstrate it. It's just a lesson on quantum computing.
- Ruckgesicht, on 10/12/2007, -0/+50@shinynew:
Vacuum tubing never went mainstream (i.e. one in every home) either, but here I am sitting at a computer that would not exist without it. - luvkit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33I just think it's amazing they're making a computer based on quantum mechanics, a science the general public knows hardly anything about... let alone being able to comprehend quantum mechanics.
- WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31I predict that these machines will get so big and expensive that only the five kings of the world will own them.
- n0c0ntr0l, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28@KillerofKkiller that professor was right, because even when quantum computers do exist, they don't
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -8/+33Just make sure _NEVER_ to look at your computer.
also it needs to be at 5 millikevin, your 1337 water cooled computer isnt good enough. Quantum computing will not be main stream for a LONG as time, if ever. - Clearz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24"i'm in ur electrons, reversing ur spin"
I, for one, welcome our Quantum overlords.
In Soviet Russia, Quantum computers demostrate you.
But will it run linux?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
But will it blend?
Ok now that we have the ***** talk out of the way can we get on with the ***** decussion. - D15C1PL3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21Actually it comes with both a Blue Ray and an HD DVD player. The problem is that you do not know which player state it is until you test it.
- bittie, on 10/12/2007, -22/+41i'm in ur electrons, reversing ur spin...
- webwiz1986, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Who cares. Just hold the darn lighting rod steady.
- WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16From Curios on an earlier story: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8818.html
Some useful links from previous comments
by surgestrip on 2/08/07
want to see what its about watch the lecture this thing is for real Dwave has been on this for some time
http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/060412-ee380-300.asx
by lobster on 2/08/07
There is a strong intelligence led need for Quantum computing and the infrastructure for open sourcing languages such as QCL (already being simulated) and ASQ (theoretical only) is being developed.
http://tmxxine.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=FaqsTmxxine
images-
http://dwave.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/img_5568-2.jpg
http://dwave.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/lef-plate-tunnel.jpg
http://dwave.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/sample-holder-with-europa-chip_small.JPG - WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Actually, the quantum computer uses superposition to attempt all possible brute force combinations- that a normal compter would try one at a time- simultaneously, thus cracking it instantly.
source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8818.html - WorldGroove, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Hmm.... well, my question is... how long would it take this computer to brute-force PGP, TrueCrypt, etc.
- DeathScytheHell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14How many jiggawats does that beast use?
- nepawoods, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14This news release is thoroughly vague with regard to just what they demonstrated and how. I'm skeptical.
From their web site: http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?page=quantum-computing
"In 1936, mathematician Alan Turing published a famous paper that addressed the problem of computability. His thesis was that all computers were equivalent, and could all be simulated by each other. By extension, a problem was either computable or not, regardless of what computer it was run on. This paper led to the concept of the Universal Turing Machine, an idealized model of a computer to which all computers are equivalent.
We now know that Turing was only partially correct."
It isn't clear in what way they would say Turing was incorrect. Quantum computers do not change what is computable and what isn't. - beguiledfoil, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12"Just make sure _NEVER_ to look at your computer."
I hope this is a joke... people have some grave misconceptions about the process of 'observation' at the subatomic level... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Well, boiling water does take longer if you look at it. Just the same with qbit computers.
- nepawoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@shadednine
"In theory, quantum computing does indeed disprove Turing's theory, because it can do in a finite amount of time what a simply Turing machine cannot, that is, solve the same problem in a finite amount of time."
Wrong. Anything computable via quantum computing is computable by a Turing machine. Quantum computing may compute some functions faster, but it still only computes the same functions. - nepawoods, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9You are wrong. It doesn't change what is computable. Quantum computers may solve some problems faster, but they can not solve problems that are unsolveable by ordinary computers. So how was Turing incorrect?
- orangemarmalade, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@guy:
wow. beaten by only 12 hours - eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8/you
//came from fark
///didn't you? - fynergy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13I don't know about "commercially viable":
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa001&articleID=BD4EFAA8-E7F2-99DF-372B272D3E271363
" Even if the computer were to work as advertised, it still would be nearly 1,000 times too small to solve problems that stump ordinary computers. Moreover, researchers do not know whether it will work at bigger sizes." - hawkxor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Related to Turing's claim was another assumption, that the cost of simulating any other type of computer, on a turing machine, is essentially free - hence the need to only consider theory as related to a Turing machine. Nobody knows quite what to think of quantum computers, but this has been essentially proven wrong since a quantum computer can solve boolean satisfiability (the quintessential NP-complete) problem in polynomial time, yet a Turing machine almost certainly cannot.
But it is certainly true that there is no problem that is undecidable (unsolvable) on an ordinary computer that is decidable on a quantum computer. - up2l8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7How nefariously ambiguous. This resonates of water powered welders and infinite energy derived from permanent magnets.
- zekt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9The test plan has just been created:
Test 1: Is the cat dead?
Test data: One cat.
Expected result: Alive and dead - browwiw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8But can it run Oregon Trail?
- eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7My friends have been doing the backend programming for this thing for the past 8 months, on their work terms.
Unless they've been in Vancouver selling crack the entire time and making this stuff up, I'm pretty sure it's legit. - Farik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The Computer History Museum oddly makes no mention of such a huge unveiling on their events page.
http://www.computerhistory.org/events/ - megaton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Even if the computer were to work as advertised, it still would be nearly 1,000 times too small to solve problems that stump ordinary computers."
Forgive my ignorance, but what does that even mean?
1) What does size have to do with it?
2) Why does it have to solve problems that stump ordinary computers?
Please enlighten me. (Rather than digg me down.) I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks! :) - unco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6test 2
question: any
answer: 42 - jdstorer2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@bittie: I don't think anyone got your joke. +1 for quantum mechanics jokes!
- Silencer7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Geez, don't be so skeptical. I heard Infinium Labs was going to use this processor in its new version of the Phantom...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is the largest, luxurious, and most prestigious quantum computer news in the world. It's HUGE! --Trump
- bubbius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm sorry, but the above replies are just WRONG. The SAT problem is not known to be polytime computable in the quantum model, and therefore no NP-hard problems are. This doesn't mean that it isn't the case, but work in quantum computing (black-box lower bounds for search, see Grover's algorithm) basically gives that for NP-style search problems the best you can hope for is a quadratic speedup. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily impossible, but given the general state of knowledge for non-black-box techniques in complexity theory, it seems unlikely that we will do much better anytime soon.
That being said, there are problems that are *believed* to be hard, such as factoring and discrete log, that are polytime computable in the quantum model thanks to the huge speedup offered by the quantum fourier transform over the classical FFT. However, it should be stressed that these are *believed* hard in the classical model, and not provably equivalent to the standard set of "hard" NP-complete problems for which we know practically nothing in the quantum model. - cranium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Still waiting for Schrödinger's snuff flick.
- theMurdocVolta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+41.21 jigawatts? 1.21 jigawatts? Great Scott!
What the hell is a jigawatt? - munix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Here is the real problem if this test worked and if it is scalable this will not make counterstrike run any faster. Quantum computers will only let problems that now require us to go through all permutations or many of them. Quantum computers in our current system of cryptography could cause a complete breakdown of critical systems. One only needs to imagine what would happen if a corrupt company used quantum computers to effectively read all of your encryption's.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4So, I will have 20TB of midget porn, and yet not have 20TB of midget porn?
- dreamlayers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Thanks for that link! The article provides more details plus some independent commentary and criticism. Linking to press releases is lame, so I'm going to bury this story as lame and digg the other story: http://digg.com/hardware/D_Wave_Unveils_Quantum_Computer_Solves_Sudoku_Puzzles .
Oh, and why is fynergy being dugg down??? That might be the most useful link here! - iMyst, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Don't digg him down! I think he may be on to something here...
- eesser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Yeah, but I don't think they said current computers "can't" solve NP-complete problems, they just said that quantum computers can. So I'm not sure we can conclude "they can't get basic computer science" facts straight from that.
There is a good post on Ars about this today, and apparently there's going to be another demo sometime soon to which Ars will be sending someone. I'm sure their coverage will be pretty comprehensive. This piece just appears to be a PR press release, with nearly no substance. As another poster said, it reads much more like a (razor-thin) primer on the state of quantum computing than a "demo report". The text of the digg submission is pretty misleading - or at least it isn't well backed up by the article itself. The whole "they said they did it, they did it, and they demonstrated it" got me worked up, so I was dissapointed to find that the article didn't even spell out clearly WHAT they did. Today. At their demo. - eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4read: scalable
read: the ***** article - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This particular implementation of quantum computing can be modified to factor large numbers into primes (i.e. break RSA) much quicker than current systems. These guys claim that by 2009 they'll be able to handle numbers up to 1000 bits which is big enough to handle the standard 128 or 256 bit encryption used online.
However it will not be able to brute-force ALL types of strong encryption. As far as current knowledge goes, a quantum computer is not a big help for cracking symmetric ciphers such as Triple DES or AES. - jerryparid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Quoted for the truth! (Both comments)
I can just image it calculate all the possible chess combinations depth 999k in a second. - merper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You do realize that is a statement from the company itself right?
But to be fair, I think this will run great once it's run by the cold fusion plant I just demonstrated to myself. - WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3it happened:
http://dwave.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/img_5568-2.jpg
http://dwave.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/lef-plate-tunnel.jpg
http://dwave.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/sample-holder-with-europa-chip_small.JPG - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3A lot posters here don't seem to realise what a quantum computer can and cannot do. A QC is not a general purpose computer - it can not run arbitraty programs on it. It cannot be reconfigured. A QC is essentially hard-wired to do exactly ONE type of calculation. One example might be to factorise a number into primes. This particular one solves a type of surface area problem that is very time-consuming to do with normal PCs. There's only a small number of applications that QCs are really useful for - we'll never have them sitting on our desks at home.
- eddyc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'd say it will and it wont
- sonmi451, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4But we will be able to solve chess.
1. e4! and forced mate in 47. -
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