World's First Programmable Quantum Photonic Chip 156
MrSeb writes "A team of engineering geniuses from the University of Bristol, England has developed the world's first re-programmable, multi-purpose quantum photonic computer chip that relies on quantum entanglement to perform calculations. With multiple waveguide channels (made from standard silicon dioxide), and eight electrodes, the silicon chip is capable of repeatedly entangling photons. Depending on how the electrodes are programmed, different quantum states can be produced. The end result is two qubits that can be used to perform quantum computing. Most importantly, though, unlike existing quantum photonic setups which require apparatus the size of a 'large dining table,' this new chip is tiny: just 70mm (2.7 inches) by 3mm."
Re:computing power scales exponentially (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely. However right now we do not have 20 qubits in a device, we have 2 qubits today. If progress in physics and electronics allows us to have 3 qubits in 18 month, 4 qubits in 36 months and so on, we have just reinvented the quantum version of Moore's law.
Result=99% of CPUengineers will be without job ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Help me out.
This would have happened sooner or later, and I am assuming it happened. Quantum computer are here to stay.
Question is, what this means to general community of engineers and software developers ?
I am perfectly aware that we don't have Hardware that is capable of supporting the work of this chip (RAM and HD don't make sense). Maybe in another 15 years.
Does it mean complete shift of computing paradigm ?
Instead of 100 servers, we have just small black-box in a backroom ?
What will happened to all the engineers who created silicon chips ?
What all this means for programmers ?
Not exactly exponentially (Score:5, Insightful)
The computing part does indeed act on every combination your register can have at the same time. An exponential speedup here, that part is right. What is missing on your post is that reading the result is kind of hard. We only know how to get usefull data from a few kinds of calculation, and we don't know if it is possible to get anything usefull from the general case.
The good news is that if we ever discover a way to read the result of a general computation (if it is possible), we'd have discovered a nondeterministic computer. And forget about P ?= NP.
Re:computing power scales exponentially (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:CPUengineers will be without job ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quantum computers are not "here" in any meaningful sense. Nobody ever has demonstrated a meaningful larger-numbers quantum computation (say, with numbers > 1000). At the moment, the there is no proof these will even work. It is still entirely feasible that the theory is wrong and large quantum computers are not possible or not useful. Even some tiny deviations from the current theory could cause that. Remember the results have to be physically measured and the input has to be physically put in. Both operations with huge, huge errors when compares to the precision classical computers achieve.
Then, even if meaningful sizes can be built (which is entirely unclear at this time) they are not effective or efficient for most problems.
Example: For breaking ciphers like AES, you get a square root on the key size, i.e. breaking AES-256 becomes as difficult as breaking AES-128 (both by brute force). Breaking AES-128 by brute force without quantum computers is quite infeasible in this universe. Breaking AES-256 by brute-force with quantum computers is quite infeasible in this universe as well.
Forget about any large data-set problems as well. Unlike classical computers, you cannot break problems down for quantum computers. You always have to solve the whole thing in one go, or you lose the advantages.
Bottom line: This is not a revolution, even if it turns out not to be bogus in the first place.
Re:computing power scales exponentially (Score:5, Insightful)
that's an arse-backward definition of "simulation" that you have.
it needs to be able to make meaningful predictions as well.
for example, a VFX explosion in a space-opera versus a simulation of a nuke explosion on a supercomputer at Los Alamos