Russia Joins Race To Make Quantum Dreams a Reality (nature.com) 18
Russia has launched an effort to build a working quantum computer, in a bid to catch up to other countries in the race for practical quantum technologies. From a report: The government will inject around 50 billion roubles (US$790 million) over the next 5 years into basic and applied quantum research carried out at leading Russian laboratories, the country's deputy prime minister, Maxim Akimov, announced on 6 December at a technology forum in Sochi. The windfall is part of a 258-billion-rouble programme for research and development in digital technologies, which the Kremlin has deemed vital for modernizing and diversifying the Russian economy. "This is a real boost," says Aleksey Fedorov, a quantum physicist at the Russian Quantum Center (RQC), a private research facility in Skolkovo near Moscow. "If things work out as planned, this initiative will be a major step towards bringing Russian quantum science to a world-class standard."
[...] The race is on to create quantum computers that outperform classical machines in specific tasks. Prototypes developed by Google and IBM, headquartered in Mountain View, California, and Armonk, New York, respectively, are approaching the limit of classical computer simulation. In October, scientists at Google announced that a quantum processor working on a specific calculation had achieved such a quantum advantage. Russia is far from this milestone. "We're 5 to 10 years behind," says Fedorov. "But there's a lot of potential here, and we follow very closely what's happening abroad." Poor funding has excluded Russian quantum scientists from competing with Google, says Ilya Besedin, an engineer at the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow.
[...] The race is on to create quantum computers that outperform classical machines in specific tasks. Prototypes developed by Google and IBM, headquartered in Mountain View, California, and Armonk, New York, respectively, are approaching the limit of classical computer simulation. In October, scientists at Google announced that a quantum processor working on a specific calculation had achieved such a quantum advantage. Russia is far from this milestone. "We're 5 to 10 years behind," says Fedorov. "But there's a lot of potential here, and we follow very closely what's happening abroad." Poor funding has excluded Russian quantum scientists from competing with Google, says Ilya Besedin, an engineer at the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow.
Hardly (Score:2)
"Quantum dreams" is a song from heavenchord, it's a reality.
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"Quantum dreams" is a song from heavenchord, it's a reality.
The Russians are trying to answer the question:
"Do quantum computers dream of quantum sheep?"
Here's a Fractal Cow [mndl.hu] to get your imagination running . . .
Plan to spend $50B Roubles on theft (Score:3)
"We in Russia to distribute $50 Billion Roubles to ourselves under the guise of quantum computing investment, then when the Americans figure it out we will just steal their tech. So, I would say we are about 5 years out from a reliable quantum computer."
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It reminds me of this one country where some budget item of $800+ billion is shared between pals and intended recipient is happy if value he receives, after friend share this cake, $100 billion in equipment, salaries, etc. Hint: Not Russia :)
Stop taking Russia at face value (Score:1)
Whatever Russia's government claims — especially, what it claims in English — is more likely to be false than true.
Oh, this I can believe, yes. The money will be "injected"... With the goal as vague as "quantum dreams", no one will even be able to formulate the question as to what it was spent on. Moreover, the domain having some military applications, the details ca
Skeptical of how successful this will be (Score:2)
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You think brain drain... There is good video blog, in Russian, explaining this, and I remember this recent issue - currently, some 250,000 foreign students study in Russia, and around 50,000 Russian students are abroad. That is a tendency, and it looks like positive inflow to me. I can be wrong, of course.
Also, 450,000+ engineers graduate each year in Russia [google.com], and some 53%+ adult population with a degree. Number for US is around 230,000 and it comes second on this list. US population is twice of Russian Fede
Not good (Score:1)
Think about how many American voters they will be able to force to vote a certain way once they start building these computers. Those clever Russians!
The sad truth is that (Score:2)
Re: The sad truth is that (Score:2)
Trump will just give him the technology (Score:1)
All heil Trump!
The best quantum computing skeptic is Russian (Score:2)
Physicist Mikhail Dyakonov said,
So the number of continuous parameters describing the state of such a useful quantum computer at any given moment must be... about 10^300... Could we ever learn to control the more than 10^300 continuously variable parameters defining the quantum state of such a system? My answer is simple. No, never.
Source: The Case Against Quantum Computing, IEEE Spectrum [ieee.org]