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Many believe that true quantum computing will enable computations that supercomputers would take hundreds of years to process, enabling real-time weather prediction, custom drug design and cracking encryption. Geordie Rose isn’t promising those kinds of universal applications, at least not immediately.
“The breadth of applications is actually quite narrow. The machine can be thought of most profitably as an analogue computer. It’s not exactly an analogue computer, it’s something novel that has never existed before but conceptually you can think of it as a special purpose chip designed to do one thing well. Ultimately, quantum computers will turn into a lot more than that but when you do the first iteration of a technology, it helps to focus what it does. This particular chip, all it does is problems related to pattern matching. Other applications such as code breaking; this chip is disabled in a way that makes those things not possible to run on it. It is possible that in future we might expand - if this particular project succeeds financially – to include other type of processors that are able to harness nature in way that allows you to do these things. But those are long term things and certainly not our focus right now.”
At the Future in Review conference this year Rose showed an image matching program developed with Google image matching expert, Dr Hartmut Neven, that can distinguish photos of, say, the Taj Mahal from photos of Big Ben by comparing the image to a group of images already labelled as the Taj Mahal. The software looks for matching points of interest in the photos, which means solving hard maths problems that Orion is very good at, according to Rose. “Similarity matching between images is a very hard artificial intelligence problem and it turns out, with quantum computers, that their sweet spot is in the technical math that underlies certain hard vision problems and certain hard machine learning problems.”
You can match images and look for patterns on conventional computers, but it takes a lot of time it train the system, says Rose. “The requirement to do very fast search on a large number of images requires that you sacrifice quality. Often what happens in image search is that you can do very well on finding certain types of objects in images by spending a lot of time up front. You can detect faces in photos very quickly if you spend a year using an enormous amount of computing cycles to do that.”
Using Orion won’t necessarily speed up the time it takes to search, but he believes it will produce much better matches to what you’re looking for, and he’s not worried by performance that’s actually slower than conventional computing today. “This is not a demonstration of performance; this is a demonstration that we can do this end to end. We will be able to get a quality of matching on large data sets you simply can’t get with conventional computing, no matter how good your algorithms are. When you are searching for something complicated or unique it’s sometimes hard to describe. This is the first step of a system where you can query not with text but with images; it’s the sweet spot of the next generation of search and what these computers do very well.”
Pattern matching covers a wide range of applications. D-wave has previously demonstrated searching a database of molecules, creating a seating plan with many constraints on who can sit together and solving Sudoku puzzles and commercial applications are the next step. Rose talks about improving the logistics of how jet fuel is distributed and stored, cataloguing stars in images of space, modelling protein folding and counting the number of rocks in a possible landing area on Mars but also solving complex business problems: “What is the ideal business unit in my company to work on this project? I need three people who know C++ and earn less than such and such...”
But Orion isn’t anywhere near ready to go in your data center. It’s going to be staying in D-wave’s headquarters in Burnaby, Canada for the immediate future, because of what Rose calls the “extraordinary” cooling requirements. The Josephson junctions are only microns across; the chip they’re on is 5 millimetres square. But Orion itself is roughly the size of a large domestic refrigerator, and most of the system is taken up by the refrigeration equipment.
“This thing sits inside a shielded room, a big metal room which is almost a magnetic vacuum for certain frequencies of EM radiation. Inside is an insert which is half fridge and half filtering. We run this thing at ten milliKelvin, just 0.01 degrees above absolute zero – and just for a point of reference the temperature of interstellar space is about 2.7 Kelvin. The chip needs to sit in a magnetic vacuum. A lot of the gadgetry inside this is very, very robust filters that filter out every bit of noise you can with current technology, to get the signals on the lines coming in and the ambient magnetic field to very low levels - one nanotesla in three dimensions across the whole chip, which is at or beyond the state of the art for magnetic vacuum technology.”
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LIKE A GLOVE!
I WANT TO SEE THAT THING PWN SOME GAMES >< I KNOW A LITTEL OVER BOARD BUT I CANT DREAM CANT I?
dam you beat me to 1st post ?> o wait that was me i just was to fast about posting i did not sigh in o well i cant prove it now but i know it was me >< LIKE A GLOVE
oops i said a bad word dont report me >< any ways the 1st post was me i was to quick to sigh in and yes i have made 3 post so sue me. LIKE A GLOVE
I still wish someone would explain exactly how quantum mechanics and quantum computers work. Do they actually defy the laws of physics or what? I didn't think that was possible.....
I meant to say "in layman's terms"
Very cool, i'd also like to see that pwn some games. However judging by what they say, it'll be very difficult to do if it's even possible.
BTW what does it matter who got first post anyway? lol
This is some wild funky alien technology sh#t... Yeeeehaaa!
Quantum computers process information with the "electron pairing" effect they naturally operate with, meaning it operates in such a way when one of the 28 bits is "doing something", it affects other parts of the chip in such a way they "do the same thing" naturally...it has very deep implications because it would basically SCALE LIKE CRAZY....NATURALLY....we are still in its infancy w/ 28 QBits, i dont even immagine what is will be like with 512...1024....a Giga QBit.....a Tera Q Bit.... they would all scale naturally... whatever we an do now whit it will be done faster and better when wider versions of the chip come out, withought the need to re-coding i immagine (Totally different from the way we program now with the current multi-core chips needing special programming to take advantage of more resources).- my 2 centz.
Quantum computers process information with the "electron pairing" effect they naturally operate with, meaning it operates in such a way when one of the 28 bits is "doing something", it affects other parts of the chip in such a way they "do the same thing" naturally...it has very deep implications because it would basically SCALE LIKE CRAZY....NATURALLY....we are still in its infancy w/ 28 QBits, i dont even immagine what is will be like with 512...1024....a Giga QBit.....a Tera Q Bit.... they would all scale naturally... whatever we an do now whit it will be done faster and better when wider versions of the chip come out, withought the need to re-coding i immagine (Totally different from the way we program now with the current multi-core chips needing special programming to take advantage of more resources).- my 2 centz.
basically, a quantum computer does not have to do "work" to get an answer. The "work" it does involves electrons and atoms. The problem is, is that when the "computer" reads the atoms/electrons, they are destroyed. So, the data can only be read once. But as mentioned in the article, code cracking would be very easy, as the computer would only have to work with one atom. Basically, the future quantum computer will be able to crack any code, instantly.
"I still wish someone would explain exactly how quantum mechanics and quantum computers work. Do they actually defy the laws of physics or what? I didn't think that was possible....."
Quantum Physics are laws that are far more complex than regular everyday Physics. They do not defy but rather redefine and enhance our understanding of physics at a much smaller scale (Smaller than atom size)
Games aren't really an area that would benefit directly from Quantum computing. The benefit is for other fields, like mathematics, communication, cracking encryption, physics. Quantum does not mean faster, it means they operate in a fundamentally different way and have different applications. Just like the stack of IBM QS22 Cell Blades next to me (Which don't even have video cards), they are for a totally different purpose and in some cases even if they could run a normal game might even be slower. High-Performance-Computing is a very different field, and it has to be specifically programmed for, which is why the article mentions they are advancing the new SDKs to allow things to run.
My computers don't even have a real "OS", they have micro kernels which only have one program installed, and that program is specifically crafted to fit inside the 256KB of L2 Cache on the IBM Cell Processor to prevent the system having to page regular, slow, system RAM.
The stuff is written in C, and then hand-tuned in assembler.
That does not mean the development is not exciting, its just that like most major science changes, the action is far from the end user and it will take products a while to trickle down to something we use everyday. Ironically, by the time it gets to us, most people will have no idea which technologies brought them to fruition in the first place.
I wonder how fast an E8500 could run at -270ºC.
I wonder how fast an E8500 could run at -270ºC.
You might have a good idea when the OC competition ensues. I'm sure you'll have some guys throwing -200C nitrogen at 8500's.
One question: Does it overclock? That cooler should at least allow for a 30% overclock...
I want one!
this is all good and fine. Will it play Crysis
Intel will buy them in after they make all that profit from Nehalem and release quantum computers for commercial use as soon as they figure out how to make a "safe", commercially viable, 3 Kelvin refrigeration units. Coolermaster will then release a 2 Kelvin unit for overclockers 3 months later...
Unfortunately it will NOT be able to play Crysis at 60FPS.
Reaching temperature as mentioned above would lead to super conductivity . Which people are yet to incorporate in daily usage . This is no area for child's play (games)
Where quantum computers will one day actually see uses :
1. scientist mapping the exact distances of various stars from our solor system (curnetly this can on be guesstamated usuing doppleganger effects in light spetrum it's not very acruate , whiel we can get a "this starr is apoximately 3 light eyars from us" we cant get an exact milage for star distances) quantum computing would change how accurate science is in gauging distances in space
2. Space navigation : for both now and teh future quantum computing could increase space navigation safety by 100% , if any of you watched appollo 13 you would see several ponts where the peoepl ahd to hit percise navigation , whil current computers can naivigate OK , there is still LARGE margin for error when it coems to landign a spcace craft , and or going to another planet , again quantum comptuers would make this error margin non exsitant thus increasing teh saftey of space travel , in the future there is no telling how far this could be taken for navigational purposes.
3. any field where extremely large math numbers are crunched (note i sued space ing eneral on my otehr two definitions mostly because space mroe than any field deals with large nubmers adn multiple varrible sthat have to be considered) other fields that use this could things such scinetist that study earth quakes, or weather scientist that study weather patterns / hurricane wind pressure and the like.
however , I doubt that quantum computing will ever be needed just for browsing the web , in teh long term i think conventional computers will be as viable tomorrow as they are today , for teh average computer user and or gaming enthusiast