Quantum Computers sitting in their cryogenic chambers are such works of art, stacks of giant brass plates and hundreds of heat pipes (or coolant pipes? liquid helium I suppose) twisted and coiling throughout the structure hanging like some steampunk chandelier (why do they hang from above anyway?) EDIT: changed to a few direct links to pics: [0][1][2]<p>The esoteric design reminds me of the Connection Machine blog posted the other day, "to communicate to people that this was the first of a new generation of computers, unlike any machine they had seen before." [3]<p>I'm curious what they do with these prototypes once they are obsoleted in a matter of months, are the parts so expensive they tear it down to reuse them? Or will the machines be able to go on tour and stand in glass cases to intrigue the next generation of engineers? I know it had a tremendous effect on me to stand in front of a hand-wired lisp machine at the MIT museum.<p>[0] <a href="https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AANsFUz.img" rel="nofollow">https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AANs...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AANsBTo.img" rel="nofollow">https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AANs...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://static.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20191023&t=2&i=1444205374&r=LYNXMPEF9M1AZ&w=1600" rel="nofollow">https://static.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20191023&t=2&...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://tamikothiel.com/theory/cm_txts/" rel="nofollow">https://tamikothiel.com/theory/cm_txts/</a>
Tangential question, what are the areas of technology where we can expect to see substantial progress or breakthroughs within 2030, i.e. what are the most exciting areas to follow and look forward to? Here's my list:<p>- Nuclear fusion (Helion, ZAP, TAE, Tokamak Energy, CFS, Wendelstein).<p>- Self-driving cars.<p>- New types of nuclear fission reactors.<p>- Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship).<p>- Supersonic airplanes (Boom).<p>- Solid state batteries.<p>- Quantum computing.<p>- CPUs and GPUs on sub-5nm nodes.<p>- CRISPR-based therapies.<p>- Longevity research.
It is incredibly dishonest of them to post this without any details about the noise parameters of the system.<p>When reading "127-qubit system" you would expect that you can perform arbitrary quantum computations on these 127 qubits and they would reasonably cohere for at least a few quantum gates.<p>In reality the noise levels are so strong that you can essentially do nothing with them except get random noise results. Maybe averaging the same computation 10 million times will <i>just</i> give you enough proof that they were actually coherent and did a quantum computation.<p>The omission of proper technical details is essentially the same as lying.
Any idea where one can find qubit lifetimes and gate fidelities? The classical RF engineering behind controlling that many qubits is certainly great, but it is hard to get excited about the "quantumness" without these figures of merit.
No they didn't; there is no such thing as a quantum computer or a quantum processor outside of theoretical papers. I know I'll be downvoted by saying that (like I was last time) but that doesn't change facts; they have a random number generator that is capable of generating a lot of very random numbers... cool, cool, cool.
Scott Aaronson had a brief comment on the news on his blog:
<a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6111" rel="nofollow">https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6111</a><p>Seems we're still a bit light on details. I hope to see a lot more on this. The progress on quantum computing lately is exciting though!
> IBM Quantum System Two is designed to work with IBM's future 433-qubit and 1,121 qubit processors.<p>what's the smallest <i>useful</i> (as in, 'non-toy', or maybe 'worth buying time on') quantum computer?
I'm starting to get some fatigue about quantum computer news, and I just dismiss them now. If there really is a valuable breakthrough, everyone will be talking about it for months non-stop so I won't miss it.
Reminds me of computing history with vacuum tube computers the size of a room. Even if the actual hardware isn't practical today, the lessons learned will still apply in the future.
This is fascinating to me! Quantum computing is such an incredible frontier. But I suppose it will mostly be used to decrypt all the currently un-decryptable internet traffic being archived at the Utah Data Center [1]. But, maybe it will also be used for something good for humanity, too.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center</a>
For me, the name 'Eagle' reminds me of the book "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. That book is about the design and bring-up of another new (at the time) computer system, the Data General MV/8000, which was also code-named Eagle.<p>I wish IBM great success with their work.<p>edit: Clarified that the MV/8000 project was also code-named Eagle.
I can avoid thinking that as a species, QC is a bad investment. I think we’re trying just too early, like Charles Babbage. Great idea but the world doesn’t have the tech required.<p>I think that if they are honest with themselves, most researchers know they won’t see the day QC are a practical reality, but everyone is trying to become the “father of QC”.
For those who know how all this works or how it should work.<p>If it is true that a type of quantum computer might be able factor large number and if it is true that it would allow the users to read lots of encrypted data then quantum computing would be at the very top of the list of every intelligence agency out there in every country.
I am thinking high multi billion labs yr/labs.<p>It would be a direct threat / issue / opportunity to national security.<p>I am burying myself in assumptions I cannot begin to justify.)<p>If that is the case, is what we are seeing here from IBM, or Google, state of the art?<p>What are the chances that some (secret) government lab somewhere ( not necessarily in the US) has a much more advanced model already working?<p>Is there any chance that a working crypto breaker could be operational?<p>Of course, if there was such a thing, out there, it would be in the greatest interest of whatever fraction had it to ensure nobody knew about it. Since it would give an enormous advantage to posses and use it, it would be critical to not let anyone know.<p>I came across some declassified docs covering NSA a long long time ago,
from what I learned it seemed like they had access to technology that was not commercially available at the time.<p>(Sorry,. I like to write fictional stories on my spare time.
I may have dipped into that territory too much in this post.)
As someone who knows little about quantum computing, what is the significance of 127-qubits? (as opposed to classical computing's 128 bits, as a reference)
A new MIT startup, QuEra, just announced a 256 quantum computer —- and they used it to make pixel art.
<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/17/1040243/quantum-computer-256-bit-startup/" rel="nofollow">https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/17/1040243/quantum-...</a><p>Discussion:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29259549" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29259549</a>
I wonder how fast quantum computers are progressing. Like are we seeing similar increases in performance that we saw with silicon computers back in the 60s->Now? Or is it slower due to the intense cooling we need to give them?
IBM has been making the coolest-looking (and coolest) computers... <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0glxDw700g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0glxDw700g</a>
Very press-releasey, which I guess is fair given that it is, indeed, a press release. I'd love to hear more context from people knowledgeable in the field.
"IBM measures progress in quantum computing hardware through three performance attributes: Scale, Quality and Speed."<p>That's nice. The real world (let alone the quantum one - whatever that means) doesn't.<p>Please Mr IBM: Get your scientists to inform your press releases. At the moment you sound like a bit of a nob with an unfortunate affliction.
>'Eagle' is IBM's first quantum processor developed and deployed to contain more than 100 operational and connected qubits. It follows IBM's 65-qubit 'Hummingbird' processor unveiled in 2020 and the 27-qubit 'Falcon' processor unveiled in 2019.<p>I guess I missed last years announcement of the 65 qubit one.<p>So okay we have a 127 qubit machine, what did they <i>do</i> with it afterwards?<p>The Q3 financials were released so this article can't have been released to pump up the stock price.
Obligatory PSA: Scott Locklin's "Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit":<p>"When I say Quantum Computing is a bullshit field, I don’t mean everything in the field is bullshit, though to first order, this appears to be approximately true. I don’t have a mathematical proof that Quantum Computing isn’t at least theoretically possible. I also do not have a mathematical proof that we can or can’t make the artificial bacteria of K. Eric Drexler’s nanotech fantasies. Yet, I know both fields are bullshit. Both fields involve forming new kinds of matter that we haven’t the slightest idea how to construct. Neither field has a sane ‘first step’ to make their large claims true.<p>.....<p>“quantum computing” enthusiasts expect you to overlook the fact that they haven’t a clue as to how to build and manipulate quantum coherent forms of matter necessary to achieve quantum computation. A quantum computer capable of truly factoring the number 21 is missing in action. In fact, the factoring of the number 15 into 3 and 5 is a bit of a parlour trick, as they design the experiment while knowing the answer, thus leaving out the gates required if we didn’t know how to factor 15. The actual number of gates needed to factor a n-bit number is 72 x n^3; so for 15, it’s 4 bits, 4608 gates; not happening any time soon".<p>[1]: <a href="https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-computing-as-a-field-is-obvious-bullshit/" rel="nofollow">https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-comput...</a>