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Hardware Science

New Idea Could Lead to Quantum RAM 109

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the cat-not-included dept.
KentuckyFC writes to tell us that scientists in Italy and the US have designed a new method of retrieving information from quantum memory that could allow them to create "Quantum RAM". "Giovannetti's idea is to send the address down the branching tree of connections in such a way that it only affects one switch at a time. The first address qubit sets a switch at the first branching point to go one way or the other; the second qubit is sent that way and sets the switch at the next branching point, and so on. The total number of entangled quantum systems is smaller, and they are not so susceptible to interference, allowing information to be retrieved from memory intact."
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New Idea Could Lead to Quantum RAM More

New Idea Could Lead to Quantum RAM

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  • talk about density (Score:5, Interesting)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @10:15AM (#20317957) Homepage
    atomic-scale memory would create huge waves.

    It also could help out on the heat issues as well.

    I mean, think about how many atoms are in a normal piece of memory.... yeouch that's a lot of RAM!

  • binary trees (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ch0ad ( 1127549 )
    could this be used to implement extremely efficient binary trees? the structure sounds ideal to be but im hardly an expert.
  • Well, it's got the word quantum in it, so it's gotta be good... right?

    What are the odds that we see this in the next 15 years? 20?

  • Quantum porn (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @10:20AM (#20318027)
    [Guy 1] Hey, I had porn loaded into memory

    [Guy 2] You changed it by looking at it!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by clickclickdrone ( 964164 )
      Wonder if that would stand up in court for any pedos?
      Defendent:Your Honour, I know it's someone under-age *now* but it was grannie-pr0n when I downloaded it, really it was.

    • [Guy 1] Hey, I had porn loaded into memory

      [Guy 2] You changed it by looking at it!
      Even worse, is that vagooter on a real woman or just a well-crafted trannie post-op? And would the probability of that be uncertain until the video was viewed? Wow. I call this conundrum "Schrödinger's pussy."
    • Quantum porn will never catch on, since it swings both ways until you look at it. Whilst alright for bisexuals, this could result in some potentially fatal lower whiplash for the unprepared.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Crizp ( 216129 )
      I'll be Karma Kamikaze here, but it must be said. Must EVERY quantum whatever article have at least ONE guy with a malfunctioning funny-bone regurgitating a stale observer joke?

      We've _never_ heard it before! ha! ha! Changed it by looking at it! Fuckin' ha! Oh, the humour!

  • Quantum address? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by aadvancedGIR ( 959466 )
    I know I don't really^H^H^H^H^H understand quantum computer, but don't their output rely on some random effects to quickly generate statistics that would take ages with regular brute force computing? So would a quantum RAM provide the stored value only X% of the time?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A quantum register can be in a superposition of multiple states. For every possible state, there is a corresponding number called a probability amplitude. The square of the absolute value of the probability amplitude is equal to the probability that when observed, that state is the one you see, so naturally, the squares of the absolute values have to add up to 1. A quantum gate maps a single state onto a superposition of states.

      Maybe an example will make this clearer. A quantum state is often written as a k

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Zenaku ( 821866 )
        It's all so obvious now!
        • All I know is that the GP kept sqrt'ing the |0> and |1>. It would really depend on your lifestyle, but I think I only prefer to sqrt on/in/both the |0>.

          I really should be working...
      • W T F. How easy is it to compose neural networks with these things? That could be interesting :P

  • I don't see it on NewEgg (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @10:24AM (#20318069)
    How else will be I be able to add it to my gaming rig. Do you think this memory has lights on it? I hope so, and that'd look great through my case's side-windows.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dpiven ( 518007 )
      The good news is that the memory is full of photonic goodness.

      The bad news is it's all gamma rays.

      Better hope your side windows are heavily leaded.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gnovos ( 447128 )
      Do you think this memory has lights on it?

      It IS the lights.

    • How else will be I be able to add it to my gaming rig. Do you think this memory has lights on it? I hope so, and that'd look great through my case's side-windows.
      No windows - no windows! If you observe the memory while it's running, it loses its quantum state! So... Windows(R) probably won't support the RAM, right?

  • is this a new idea? (Score:2, Informative)

    by nategoose ( 1004564 )
    Nothing in this really sounds like a new idea except that using this method would have some benefit on the quantum level. It's just a balanced binary decision tree implemented as a (quantum, in this case) circuit such that leaf nodes are stored data and addresses are qbit streams. Am I missing something?
  • Worse is time incoherency or noise that malforms the data long transit. Imagine the as8k lskcc; fifif88*&&2/213k djc

  • Isn't it more susceptible to some cosmic noise? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't understand quantum computing..
  • Unfortunately, with Quantum Leap RAM, the contents are impaired with random bits erased, in a swiss cheese fashion.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by krgallagher ( 743575 )
      "Quantum Leap RAM"

      Does that mean my data can travel back and forth through time, but only within my own lifetime?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by N1ck0 ( 803359 )
        Yes but your data will face mirror images that are not it's own. It will find itself driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. Its only guide on this journey will be Al.

        Que synthesizer theme music.
        • Al? Didn't he invent the internet? Surely there is nobody more qualified change history for the better.
  • The last thing I need when attempting to invade my enemies' nano-castles is to have the ram start exhibiting quantum effects and tunneling through the gates!
    • Don't worry, it will become entangled at some point. Or it might not. You can't really win.
      • Yeah, but it's really going to suck trying to explain to my parents why this quantum memory doesn't keep that photo if something goes terribly wrong.
  • I mean, isn't every existing quantum computing process a simulation of what might happen if we could actually build something?

    Or, to put it another way, isn't quantum computing a mix of wild theories, vaporware, simulation, and experiments that are years away from any marketable product?

    It's an honest question, I've never seen any real physical quantum computers and nobody I know has ever seen one either. I am skeptical, but ready to be enlightened if anybody's got some real-world quantum computers out the

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Angst Badger ( 8636 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @10:58AM (#20318429)
    ...3D Realms has announced that Duke Nukem Forever will require installation of quantum RAM.
  • Last year it was "nanotech", this year, it's "Quantum computing".

    Like nanotech, QC still has many high theoretical and practical hurdles before the very first Nanite or quantum gate makes it to market. Lots of wild theorizing, but darn little actual hardware.

    In particular, a quantum gate or quantum computer is only capable of probabilistic answers. That is, each gate only has a slight predisposition to give the right answer. How you'd use unreliable gates to do say a 32-bit address decode is a bit of

    • Re:YAUQA: Yet another uninformed Quantum Article (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @11:55AM (#20319129) Journal

      a quantum gate or quantum computer is only capable of probabilistic answers
      I don't think that's true. Yes, many quantum processes are fundamentally probabilistic, but that just means we need to avoid those processes when building quantum computers. The intended design for a quantum computer is to use unitary (invertible, deterministic, etc.) operations for the quantum gates.

      The main roadblock to keeping the gates unitary (i.e. keep the error rate low) is to have the switching occur faster than the decoherence time (the timescale over which the delicate superposition decoheres into a random probabilistic mixture). This is certainly a difficult issue to solve, but in principle it is possible. The small-scale quantum computers that have been built to date were able to solve small problems deterministically.

      As a practical point, it may turn out to be very difficult to build a quantum computer... but as far as I know the intended designs of quantum computers are not to yield probabilistic answers and then to average them, but to maintain coherence long enough that the final answer is deterministic, with an acceptably small error rate.

      • (the timescale over which the delicate superposition decoheres into a random probabilistic mixture).
        I gotta figure out a way to use that phrase in conversation!
      • Yes, but how long until we can build Asimov's dream of a positronic robot? Seriously... surely that's the end aim of this: a few million tiny interconnected quantum processors to create a cool robot. Of course, we'd have to ensure that it respected human life:)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by l0b0 ( 803611 )
        Any probabilistic computation device can be duplicated to get a better probability of a correct result. Think majority voting systems. Conventional computers already have a very high probability of getting the correct result, because of sheer number of particles being shuffled around per bit - Any quantum effects are swamped by the overall system.

    • YAUQC: Yet another uninformed Quantum Comment (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In particular, a quantum gate or quantum computer is only capable of probabilistic answers. That is, each gate only has a slight predisposition to give the right answer. How you'd use unreliable gates to do say a 32-bit address decode is a bit of a brain-teaser. Without huge amounts of error-detection and correction, there's only a 1 in 2^32 chance it will access the right memory cell. We need like 1 error in 10^10, a 10^19 shortfall in reliability. I'm loath to slough off nineteen orders of magnitude.

      The f

  • I wonder what it would take to get these things study enough for use, One bump could send your quantum bit for a visit with its neighbor.
  • This physicist sounds like he should start a dot.com company!
  • Whats next? Quantum Hard Drives?

  • Quntum bits and linking, fun consequences... (Score:3, Informative)

    by BlueParrot ( 965239 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @11:33AM (#20318893)
    A theorem of quantum mechanics is that you can't perfectly copy a quantum state as that would allow you to measure the energy of one copy and the time of the other, thus violating the uncertainty principle. In practise what happens is that the two systems become entangled so that a measurement on one of them will instantly disrupt the state of the other. Thus your quantum UNIX would have the 'ln' command but not 'cp' ( 'cp -l' is ok ). Even more amusing is that this mandates that the disruption is non-deterministic. If it wasn't you could use it to transmit information and energy quicker than the speed of light, which is prohibited by relativity. So, if you thought lawmakers had trouble understanding how computers work, just wait until they get to deal with the question of who is liable for causing the de-coherence of a quantum system ( hint: you can't prove it unless you caused it ). Bring on the lawyers :P

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kebes ( 861706 )

      Thus your quantum UNIX would have the 'ln' command but not 'cp' ( 'cp -l' is ok ).

      That's a cool way of thinking about it. However I think in a real implementation of a quantum computer, the system would be a mostly classical device (including CPU, RAM, hard drive), with a quantum chip as a co-processor that is used for certain computations only. The existence of the chip, and the quantum implications thereof, would probably be hidden from the user/programmer. So for instance the compiler would take care o

  • Patent it for step 3 profit!

  • ECC? (Score:1)

    by unfunk ( 804468 )
    How the hell would you error-check the data stored in qRAM? As soon as you read it to compare it to the ECC bit, it'd change! You'd end up with the most amazing computer ever, and it wouldn't be able to do anything useful for you, aside from giving you the wrong bloody answer all the time!
    Quantum Storage? Every time you loaded a file, it'd change the contents. Even checking "Read Only" would irreversibly damage the contents... and think about the implications for Swapfiles!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by JetScootr ( 319545 )
      Even checking "Read Only" would irreversibly damage the contents

      Maybe this research is funded by Microsoft.
  • User: My box seems to not want to boot, I think it's this new ram.
    Tech Help: Your ram may, or may not, be dead. We will not know until you open the box, at which point in time it will be decided.
    User: Thanks captain obvious.
  • Okay, so how fast is it? Is it faster than the current RAM we use, at the size we use it? I mean, this may SEEM like a dumb question, but my understanding is that reading the response from a "quantum query" is non-trivial. Does anyone know?

  • I can picture the conversation... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tech-geek 1 : How much ram have you got in that rig?

    Tech-geek 2 : I'm not sure...
  • Would this solve the memory-cpu bottleneck we currently have?
  • i mean,you can access any part of the Tree at any time instead of rolling by the entire tree?
    if not,it should be called quantum tape or quantum stream or something like that,as there NO random access

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