Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful superc

Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)

Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful supercomputers

"Lockheed Martin has just upgraded its D-Wave One quantum computer to the D-Wave Two, a machine the company’s founder Geordie Rose said is 500,000 times faster than its predecessor, which was already faster than a conventional computer.

"Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years, traditional computers take."


Metro Vancouver firm’s groundbreaking quantum computer wins confidence of U.S. aerospace giant
Lockheed Martin pays reported $10-million for D-Wave System's superfast computer


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Metro+Vancouver+firm+groundbreaking+quantum+computer+wins+confidence+aerospace+giant/8202950/story.html#ixzz2PmS7CVOK


D-Wave System's Company Products:
http://www.dwavesys.com/en/products-services.html

D-Wave System's - Company:
http://www.dwavesys.com/en/company.html


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Metro+Vancouver+firm+groundbreaking+quantum+computer+wins+confidence+aerospace+giant/8202950/story.html#ixzz2PmOowiDj
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/technology/Quantum+computer+developed+Metro+Vancouver+wins+over/8202950/story.html


Videos: http://www.dwavesys.com/en/videos.html

Tour of D-Wave Facilities
Scientists, Engineering Team
http://vimeo.com/37347748

Heater.

Do check out this Berekely computer science lecture from a year or so ago for an intro to Quantum Computing. Might help to cut through the hype than any new technology always aquires.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Y4Ny8a1TI&playnext=1&list=PL565A293FC9EC32F1&feature=results_main

In fact, check out the whole course. It's great if you never took CS or perhaps even if you did.

Martin Hodge

I made it 10 minutes before I fell asleep. Apparently I need a couple more intros to the intro.

Heater.

Yes Martin, that lecture is the odd one out in the course. The rest of course is about hashes and trees and graphs and NP completeness, all that good old CS stuff. Then comes a different lecturer with this little intro that makes no sense unless you know all the CS from the 20 lectures before and have spend two years studying quatum mechanics.

What I did take away from it is this: "Why build a normal digital computer to calculate the Fourier Transform faster and faster when you can just set up a physical system that contains the same interference effects and just measure the result, instantly?" With QM you can set up such interference effects. It's rather like building an analog computer with op amps and capacitors which is a real physical analog of some differential equations you want to solve.

Kye

In a quantum computer, the heart of it is a system is the quantum processor. This is essentially an analog computer, but, with no noise (probably not right about this)... A digital computer controls the quantum processor. So, the idea is that when you need to solve some complex mathematical problem, the quantum processor can solve it more quickly because it is analog. However, for program logic and all that other great stuff you will still need the digital computer. The quantum processor is for doing lots of math.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

A quantum computer is digital. But unlike classical digital computers, each quantum bit (qubit) can exist in multiple states (i.e. a superposition of quantum states) at once. Logical operations applied to qubits also produce a superposition of results. Theoretically, then, operations that take many trials, such as factoring large numbers, can be done in parallel with a quantum computer by superposing all the trials into one quantum computation. As of August 2012, the largest number a real-life quantum computer has been able to factor is 15. So there's still a long way to go.

-Phil