Quantum Computing & the Future of the Human Species -A Galaxy Insight

“Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.”

Steve Jurvetson: AI, Nanotech and the Future of the Human Species

Visionary venture capitalist, Steve Jurvetson, is quoting quantum-computing pioneer, Oxford Professor David Deutsch, who wrote in his controversial masterpiece, Fabric of Reality: "quantum computers can efficiently render every physically possible quantum environment, even when vast numbers of universes are interacting. Quantum computers can also efficiently solve certain mathematical problems, such as factorization, which are classically intractable, and can implement types of cryptography which are classically impossible. Quantum computation is a qualitatively new way of harnessing nature."

"Quantum computers," Jurvetson summarizes in a recent J-Curve blog, "can perform accurate simulations of any physical system of comparable complexity. The type of simulation that a quantum computer does results in an exact prediction of how a system will behave in nature, for example an iterative system, like a cellular automata, — something that is literally impossible for any traditional computer, no matter how powerful."

Quantum computing sounds like science fiction -as satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. But the age of computing in not even at the end of the beginning.

Traditional computing, with its ever more microscopic circuitry etched in silicon, will soon reach a final barrier: Moore's law, which dictates that the amount of computing power you can squeeze into the same space will double every 18 months, is on course to run smack into a silicon wall by 2015, due to overheating, caused by electrical charges running through ever more tightly packed circuits.

To leapfrog the silicon wall, we have to figure out how to manipulate the brain-bending rules of the quantum realm - an Alice in Wonderland world of subatomic particles that can be in two places at once.

Where a classical computer obeys the well understood laws of classical physics, a quantum computer is a device that harnesses physical phenomenon unique to quantum mechanics (especially quantum interference) to realize a fundamentally new mode of information processing.

The fundamental unit of information in quantum computing (called a quantum bit or qubit), is not binary but rather more quaternary in nature, which differs radically from the laws of classical physics.

A qubit can exist not only in a state corresponding to the logical state 0 or 1 as in a classical bit, but also in states corresponding to a blend or superposition of these classical states. In other words, a qubit can exist as a zero, a one, or simultaneously as both 0 and 1, with a numerical coefficient representing the probability for each state. This may seem counterintuitive because everyday phenomenon are governed by classical Newtonian physics, not quantum mechanics -- which takes over at the atomic level.

The reason this is exciting is that it's derived from the massive quantum parallelism achieved through superposition, is the equivalent of performing the same operation on a classical super computer with ~10150 separate processors, which is impossible.

The idea of a computational device based on quantum mechanics was first explored in the 1970's and early 1980's by physicists and computer scientists such as Charles H. Bennett of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Paul A. Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, David Deutsch of Oxford, and the late Richard P. Feynman, Nobel laureate of the California Institute of Technology were pondering the fundamental limits of computation.

They understood that if technology continued to abide by Moore's Law, then the continually shrinking size of circuitry packed onto silicon chips would eventually reach a point where individual elements would be no larger than a few atoms. Here a problem arose because at the atomic scale the physical laws that govern the behavior and properties of the circuit are inherently quantum mechanical in nature, not classical.

This then raised the question of whether a new kind of computer could be devised based on the principles of quantum physics.

Feynman was among the first to attempt to provide an answer to this question by producing an abstract model in 1982 that showed how a quantum system could be used to do computations. He also explained how such a machine would be able to act as a simulator for quantum physics. In other words, a physicist would have the ability to carry out experiments in quantum physics inside a quantum mechanical computer.

In 1985, Deutsch realized that Feynman's assertion could eventually lead to a general purpose quantum computer and published a crucial theoretical paper showing that any physical process, in principle, could be modeled perfectly by a quantum computer. Thus, a quantum computer would have capabilities far beyond those of any traditional classical computer. After Deutsch published this paper, the search began to find interesting applications for such a machine.

The breakthrough occurred in 1994 when Shor circulated a preprint of a paper in which he set out a method for using quantum computers to crack an important problem in number theory, namely factorization. He showed how an ensemble of mathematical operations, designed specifically for a quantum computer, could be organized to enable a such a machine to factor huge numbers extremely rapidly, much faster than is possible on conventional computers.

With Shor's breakthrough, quantum computing transformed from a mere academic curiosity directly into a national and world interest.

Quantum hardware, on the other hand, remains an emerging field, but the work done thus far suggests that it will only be a matter time before we have devices large enough to test Shor's and other quantum algorithms.

Beyond the actual creation of a quantum computer, our chief limitations are the imaginations of software engineers. This will be the major challenge of the Google whiz kids of tomorrow: to take computing and networking power that is effectively infinite and create interfaces that are simple enough for mere humans to understand.

Recent breakthroughs pioneered by Stuart Wolff of the University of Virginia allow us to take electricity out of the equation, and get rid of the overheating problem that is undercutting Moore's law. Single electrons have been made to adjust their spin. Subatomic circuitry is within our grasp.

Freescale Semiconductor, a Motorola spinoff, recently began commercial shipments of magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) chips. With the giant magnetoresistive effect, or GMR, electrons spin like a top or a billiard ball in some direction relative to a magnetic field. Flip the direction of the field, and the electron flips the direction of its spin. This very basic quantum effect can be used like a binary bit, its direction labeled "0" or "1" and employed to store digital information.

MRAM is the physics inside your digital camera that doesn't take any time to store a picture. Within a matter of years, your new laptop will switch on like a light.

The ability to control spin in a computational device - "spintronics" -has huge implications: not just an end to overheating worries but the possibility of moving computer technology into the molecular realm. With molecular-level chips, a laptop could have more computing power than trillions of today's supercomputers.

Harnessing the molecular-level computing power of this exponential growth means you can tackle any problem that gets exponentially larger, and there are lots of important ones. We can't reliably predict weather or traffic or the mutation of viruses today because the number of variables and possible interactions is too massive for today's computers.

Qubits would change that and usher in a breathtaking new world on infinite possibilities: from
computer ubiquity: painted onto walls, in chairs, in your body, communicating with one another constantly and requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio frequencies in the air; to human-brain-imitating neural network and true (or near-true) artificial intelligence; ultrasonic technology that will beam video games into our brains linked up to a global network with infinite bandwidth, means that any sense can be stimulated in any way; "network-enabled telepathy" instead of cellphone conversations.
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But real, useful quantum computers, for all their interest and potential, have proved fiendishly difficult to build. Until recently, quantum computers have been more-or-less successful lab experiments.

This past February, D-Wave Systems Inc. which claims to be the world’s first — and only — provider of quantum computing systems designed to run commercial applications, ran an initial demonstration of their Orion quantum computing system, which is built around a 16-qubit superconducting adiabatic quantum computer processor. However, since D-Wave Systems has not released the full details of Orion to the scientific community, many experts are skeptical of their claims.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Comments

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008103647.htm

Scientists at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the university's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have introduced a new material that could be to computers of the future what silicon is to the computers of today.
The material -- a compound made from the elements potassium, niobium and oxygen, along with chromium ions -- could provide a technological breakthrough that leads to the development of new quantum computing technologies. Quantum computers would harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks on a scale far beyond those of current computers.
"The field of quantum information technology is in its infancy, and our work is another step forward in this fascinating field," said Saritha Nellutla, a postdoctoral associate at the magnet lab and lead author of the paper published in Physical Review Letters.
Semiconductor technology is close to reaching its performance limit. Over the years, processors have shrunk to their current size, with the components of a computer chip more than 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair. At those very small scales, quantum effects -- behaviors in matter that occur at the atomic and subatomic levels -- can start playing a role. By exploiting those behaviors, scientists hope to take computing to the next level.
In current computers, the basic unit of information is the "bit," which can have a value of 0 or 1. In so-called quantum computers, which currently exist only in theory, the basic unit is the "qubit" (short for quantum bit). A qubit can have not only a value of 0 or 1, but also all kinds of combinations of 0 and 1 -- including 0 and 1 at the same time -- meaning quantum computers could perform certain kinds of calculations much more effectively than current ones.
How scientists realize the promise of the theoretical qubit is not clear. Various designs and paths have been proposed, and one very promising idea is to use tiny magnetic fields, called "spins." Spins are associated with electrons and various atomic nuclei.
Magnet lab scientists used high magnetic fields and microwave radiation to "operate" on the spins in the new material they developed to get an indication of how long the spin could be controlled. Based on their experiments, the material could enable 500 operations in 10 microseconds before losing its ability to retain information, making it a good candidate for a qubit.
Putting this spin to work would usher in a technological revolution, because the spin state of an electron, in addition to its charge, could be used to carry, manipulate and store information.
"This material is very promising," said Naresh Dalal, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at FSU and one of the paper's authors. "But additional synthetic and magnetic characterization work is needed before it could be made suitable for use in a device."
Dalal also serves as an adviser to FSU chemistry graduate student Mekhala Pati, who created the material.
Note: This story has been adapted from material provided by Florida State University.

Fausto Intilla
http://www.oloscience.com

Posted by: Fausto Intilla | October 17, 2007 at 08:53 AM

Disagree with Quantum computers actual principles.
The Q computers are theoretic machines based on quantum physics (mechanics) and it is universally accepted the principle of 'undetermination' of Heisenberg.

Now it is correct to say that the Qbit can represent More results of a simple binary operation but could not reach 'infinite combinations of results' given the limitation introduced by Binary math.

The so called 'Qubit' seems therefore the negation of any possible quantum computer.....
since the number of possible results is limited by definition of 'binary math'.

I mean in simpler words that binary math is useless for any possible form of quantum mechanics based computing system.

At the moment , and this is well known both at Fermi Lab and CERN the more used question that those scientists pose to themselves is : " Is there any real pico particle out there and if it is there where it is ?? " .

The colliders are the solution to this question and tend to render less statistics the very existance of pico-particles and their relative positions that means 'use the the colliders to drive them there and when we want'.

Therefore aside from NOT adopting binary math for the theorized Quantum computing...the true problem is driving-directing-detecting the results of the infinite combinations typical of quantum mechanics.

Difficult problems guys : GOOD LUCK ...you need it.

Regards

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