First Von Neumann Architecture Quantum Computer

holy_calamity writes "The first computers with a von Neumann architecture, where a processor has access to RAM, appeared in the 1940s. Now the first quantum computing system with a von Neumann design has been made, at University of California Santa Barbara. Their quantum processor made up of two superconducting quantum bits can use a 2-bit "quantum RAM" to save entangled bit values into."

A few things to note

[JoshuaZ]

The term Von Neumann architecture has a variety of different meanings. One common meaning of the term is one in which instructions and data retrieval share a common bus. The original meaning was a bit more specific referring to a system that had a CPU, a separate memory for data and instructions, and input/output capability. Originally the real step forward was storing data and instructions together and treating them in some sense the same way which in many ways allowed a lot more flexibility in programming. Treating data and instructions the same way is something that still creates issues; SQL injection attacks are essentially just this: adding data that is formatted to look like instructions. But the upshot is that this use of the term- to use Von Neumann architecture to mean just having a working memory is a less common use of the term.

Moving on from there, the system in question uses superconductors to control qubits. This is one of a variety of different systems being proposed. For example, the most recent quantum computing article on Slashdot ahref=http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/08/31/1844252/Record-Low-Error-Rate-For-Qubit-Processorrel=url2html-5998 [slashdot.org]http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/08/31/1844252/Record-Low-Error-Rate-For-Qubit-Processor> used ion traps. It is important to realize that different systems cannot be used together in any meaningful way. This means that improvements on any one type don't really carry over to the others. This is important if one is thinking in terms of when all this research will come together. A really good example of this is how early quantum computing used NMR systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_magnetic_resonance_quantum_computer [wikipedia.org] which was then abandoned due to scaling and other issues. A lot of what was learned with NMR systems could not be applied to later quantum computers.