#Quantum #Computing #Update
Welcome to another video from explaining computers comm this time I’m going to talk about quantum computing which sometime into 2020 may become the most powerful kind of computing available I first made a video on this topic over 5 years ago but since that time and particularly in the last 18 months quite
A few things have happened and so I thought it was time for an update now I want to say from the start which is not going to be a deeply technical video and mainly the focus on the practical things which are being achieved by companies like IBM but this said I thought we
Should start out with a basic overview of the concepts conventional or classical computers are based on millions or billions of military transistors these can be turned on or off to represent a numeric value of 1 or 0 in turn this allows classical computers to store and process data
Using binary digits or bits in contrast quantum computers work with quantum bits or qubits which are represented by the quantum mechanical state of subatomic particles due to the strange laws of quantum mechanics qubits can exist in more than one state or superposition at exactly the same point in time this
Allows a qubit to assume a value of 1 or 0 or both of these numbers simultaneously in turn this enables a quantum computer to process a far higher number of data possibilities than a classical computer the fact that qubits can be in more than one state simultaneously is exceptionally weird
Flip a coin and it cannot come up both heads and tails at the same time and yet the quantum state of a qubit really can do just that in addition to assuming superpositions qubit can become entangled in tellement is another quantum mechanical means that the state of one qubit can
Depend on the state of another this is useful and powerful as it means that observing one qubit can reveal the state of it unobserved pair by relying on these strange quantum mechanical properties future quantum computers should be able to tackle computational challenges that cannot be handled by traditional hardware such challenges are
Likely to include molecular modelling which may lead to medical advancements and the development of new materials future quantum computers should also help to solve logistical problems as well as enabling the development of far more sophisticated deep learning artificial intelligence quantum computers are also likely to be used for code breaking and in cybersecurity
Companies are now working on quantum computing and indeed IBM has been researching quantum computing for over 35 years and in May 2016 IBM made a five cubic quantum computer publicly available on the internet which means you can go to the IBM quantum experience website and you can click on
Library to access all the manuals and learn all about it or you can go to the composer tab and you can actually access a real working quantum computer and already this has been used to run over three hundred thousand public experiments now in March 2017 IBM
Created a new division IBM Q which is going to develop and make available commercial quantum computers which will access over the web from the IBM cloud and in May 2017 IBM announced two new prototype quantum processors a 16 cubic processor which is now available over the web from its quantum experience
Website and a 17 qubit processor which is going to be the start of its commercial quantum computing ventures its prototype will it’ll be involved in delivering the very first two very early commercial quantum computing services over the web and it doesn’t stop there IBM hoped in time to develop a 50 qubit
Processor and this is significant because a 50 cubic processor should be able to achieve what’s called quantum supremacy in other words a 50 cubic processor should be more powerful than any traditional any transistor based computer ever created impressive quantum computing pioneer is d-wave systems in Canada in 2007 DUI
Demonstrated a working 16 cubic quantum computer and then in 2011 they became the first company in world to actually sell a Ponton computer when they sold a 10 million dollar one to 8 cubic machine core body weight one to Lockheed Martin in 2013 d-wave next sold a 512 cubic
Machine called the d-wave 2 to NASA and Google to establish the quantum artificial intelligence lab with Ames Research Center in California by 2015 d-wave had broken the 1000 cubic barrier with its d-wave 2x and in January 2017 sold the first 2,000 cubic machine the d-wave 2000 Q to a cyber security firm
Called temple defense systems now despite all of these milestones the work of d-wave systems remains controversial and the reason for that is they use what’s called adiabatic quantum computing what’s called quantum annealing and this approach to quantum computing has been dismissed by many others in the field at least IBM who
Called it restricted I’ve ever even called it a dead end now to explain what all this means without getting deeply technical in an IBM system they use what’s called a gate based approach in other words they actually have control of the qubits in their system it’s so whether if you’ve
Got a transistor based computer you can control the server electrons in the transistor within the d-wave system in a quantum annealing system you don’t have that type of control so you might be thinking how the d-wade actually make their quantum computer work if they haven’t got full control of the qubits
And the answer is they take advantage of the fact that all physical systems tend towards n minimum energy state what does this mean well it means if I make a cup of tea it’ll be boiling hot if I leave it on the counter for an hour and come
Back to it it’ll be stone-cold or at least it with the same temperature as a surrounding environment it was attended towards a minimum energy state and what do I do is I take advantage of the fact that the qubits and their quantum computers will also head to
Ward’s a minimum energy state so while they can’t actually directly control them they do know what their behavior is going to be another what do they do is they express all the problems they give to the quads of computer all the algorithms they give it to so expressible as energy minimization
Problems and yes that is restricted they can only run certain types of algorithms which is it allowed d-wave to create the systems it has to stop selling them and have more cubit than anybody else but you can hope you now understand why this is controversial this all said there has
Been some very good evidence recently that the d-wave systems are focal and useful for certain types of purposes not least this paper was published in 2016 and according to this paper the d-wave systems can run certain algorithms up to 100 million times faster than a conventional computer with a single core
Processor so that is a pretty good result and it’s worth pointing out that everybody who wrote this paper who did this research actually works from Google talking of Google in addition to being a customer of d-wave systems are having bought several of their quantum computers Google is also developing its
Own quantum computing technology and this is a kind of hybrid between the machines been made by IBM based on a gate based model and the machines being made by the way systems based on quantum annealing and right now Google is testing a 20 cubic machine based on its
Technology and by the end of 2017 it hopes to be testing the 49 qubit machine with other words a quantum computer approaching a point of quantum suit premise II now the other interesting thing that’s happened recently linked to Google is it in March 2017 this paper was published in the science journal
Nature and all of the author of this paper of Google engineers and I think you can take this paper to be a statement of intent from Google about the importance of quantum computing this was published in the same month that IBM announced IBM q their own commercial quantum computing initiative and in this
Paper the Google engineers are arguing they must invest very heavily in quantum computers because as they say in this paper within a few years well controlled quantum systems may be able to perform certain tasks much faster than conventional computers based on CMOS or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology just in case you’re wondering Microsoft
Is also working on quantum computing with an initiative called station Q and this is basically backing lots of different quantum computing projects around the world in different labs and also on its own campus and it’s particularly focused on technology called topological quantum computing in December 2016 Intel also revealed plans
To create quantum computers using silicon qubits inside transistors on traditional silicon wafers other words Intel is trying to make quantum computers work based on the silicon chip technology it obviously knows very well and a final company I would note is Alibaba Alibaba is the biggest e-commerce player in China and in July 2015
Alibaba teamed up with a Chinese Academy of Sciences to form the caf Alibaba quantum computing laboratory and as one of the professors involved in this explained the Cassidy Baba quantum computing laboratory will undertake frontier research on systems that appear to be the most promising in realizing the practical applications of quantum computing
Computing is based on extreme engineering for example the quantum processes at the heart of the d-wave and IBM systems I discussed in this video has to be super cooled down to almost absolute zero down to almost the temperature at which atoms stop moving and the other thing is never like to
Happen in the home or in most workplaces so we can be fairly certain that quantum computers will always be constrained to the data center and in turn that tells us that quantum computers aren’t going to replace all traditional computers didn’t nobody in industry expect that’s going to happen but clearly all the big
Computing companies do think will happen in the next decade or so is that quantum computers in the data center will start to complement through digital computers and will allow them to start offering new types of services new types of security services new types of scientific services but also new kinds
Of artificial intelligence so it’s perfectly possible in maybe in ten years time you’ll be having a conversation with a digital assistant something it’s descendants of something like ours intellectual Cortana and that digital assistant will be running on a quantum computer so in maybe a decade time many
Of us will spend our days talking to quantum computing systems and so with that thought that’s now it for this video I hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen here it was so please buy something like button if you want to know more I’ve got left loads and loads of links down in
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