Honeywell Says It Will Soon Launch the World's Most Powerful Quantum Computer (techcrunch.com) 31
"The best-kept secret in quantum computing." That's what Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) CEO Ilyas Khan called Honeywell's efforts in building the world's most powerful quantum computer. In a race where most of the major players are vying for attention, Honeywell has quietly worked on its efforts for the last few years (and under strict NDA's, it seems). But today, the company announced a major breakthrough that it claims will allow it to launch the world's most powerful quantum computer within the next three months. From a report: In addition, Honeywell also today announced that it has made strategic investments in CQC and Zapata Computing, both of which focus on the software side of quantum computing. The company has also partnered with JPMorgan Chase to develop quantum algorithms using Honeywell's quantum computer. The company also recently announced a partnership with Microsoft. Honeywell has long built the kind of complex control systems that power many of the world's largest industrial sites. It's that kind of experience that has now allowed it to build an advanced ion trap that is at the core of its efforts. This ion trap, the company claims in a paper that accompanies today's announcement, has allowed the team to achieve decoherence times that are significantly longer than those of its competitors.
Launch? (Score:2)
How powerful? (Score:2)
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Re:How powerful? (Score:4, Funny)
It's Honeywell, so it will freeze up and overheat at the same time.
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Well, maybe they can factor it up to 16 bits! If progress continues at this breakneck pace, I may have to change my 4096 bit RSA PGP key in a few hundred years!
Another one (Score:2)
If it can't do logic on error corrected qbits, it doesn't represent a step in the direction quantum computers need to go to do the things they promise.
Cool! (Score:3)
Finally, my thermostat will be able to maintain a decent temperature throughout the house
Re:Cool! (Score:4, Informative)
It is easy to assume that Honeywell only creates temperature control systems
Surprisingly, Honeywell also has an Aerospace division [honeywell.com]. and supported the only truly secure operating system KNOWN to exist. [gunkies.org]
I think that the relative silence around Honeywell's quantum computing efforts speak LOUDLY about the clientele and purpose of the systems.
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It is, unless you use it with a text-to-speech program.
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I am amazed that the uniformed snarkiness that fills these responses. My grad school office partner (PhD EE) is working on this project and I heard a lot about it the last time we had dinner. He is delaying retirement as this is the coolest thing (literally and figuratively) he has worked on in his career. When I was at HON's research center I helped design the worlds first commercial integrated avionics system that still controls the flight deck of the B777 - one of the safest planes to fly - will be in
Re: Cool! (Score:3)
Most negative things said against Honeywell are by people who donâ(TM)t remember them from the 60â(TM)s and 70â(TM)s , to them itâ(TM)s just the company that makes thermostats.
Never mind Honeywell was damn close to PARC with the amount of research and patents they held. They were at the forefront of many fields for quite a while, but have gone fairly quiet since the late 80â(TM)s. Good to see them getting back on the horse.
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Honeywell also had a major presence in Phoenix (silicon desert), and most of the adults in my neighborhood worked for Honeywell, Motorola, or DEC.
My first C instructor was a retired Honeywell software engineer who told a wonderful joke, "There was once a secure operating system, called Multics, then they cut its balls off an renamed it Eunuchs (Unix)"
He also made memory space and allocation a major part of the class, which I only learned the value of much later.
Re: Cool! (Score:3)
Honeywell has been in the supercomputing business since the beginning. There was even a ten year old article on Slashdot about their computer catching fire at the SuperComputing conference. Moving onto Quantum computing would be a next step in supercomputing, which may explain why theyâ(TM)ve not made much of a showing recently in the Top500.
Keep in mind, Honeywell is a huge conglomerate that makes flight control systems, glass cockpits, synthetic vision systems, autonomous military drones, weather RAD
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You forgot air purifiers.
Eh? (Score:1)
I'm scratching my head on how the development of industrial control systems (of which they are "OK" at) equate to the technology ion trapping, quantum entanglement, and other such things to build a quantum computer?
Here's their landing page (https://www.honeywell.com/en-us/newsroom/news/2020/03/behind-the-scenes-of-a-major-quantum-breakthrough) and paper on the topic: https://www.honeywell.com/cont... [honeywell.com]
Maybe someone with more technical chops in this area could purview and provide a geeks-level overview on the
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Well, here's my point of view about the page: there is 36 warnings and 20 errors [w3.org] in the code.
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That's better than this [w3.org] page with 101 errors and 72 warnings (as of now) in spite of it having worked well enough for you to use it to read and post.
Not miraculous, but impressive (Score:2)
Contrary to previous scientific rumor, QM -can- cause "macro" effects.
Bullshit (Score:2)
There are two possibilities.
1) All the "quantum computer breakthrough" press releases (this one, Google's one about quantum supremacy, etc.) are hyped up bullshit about nothing. If they were remotely true and significant, the military would be taking control of all their shit and shutting them up (or disappearing them).
2) Some of them are true and even significant, but the civilian state of the art looks like fucking baby shit compared to what the military's already got. If the military has achieved use
The probme with such "quantum announcements" (Score:2)
They can't announce "what we are announcing" and "when it will be available" at the same time with precision.
It's a violation of the "quantum product announcement uncertainty principle."
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And what would those "effects" be, exactly?
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If militaries or governments could break encryption, there would definitely be a black van screeching to a stop beside sexconker and dudes in black pants with lots of pockets dragging him into it.
So (Score:2)
So will it be able to do something more useful than being what it is better than something that is something else?
In other words, so far the best and fastest quantum computers have only been proven to be able to perform random operations quickly. Too bad we don't really have much need for video snow generators.
It is progress, but it's not yet time to get all breathless about practical applications.
And so (Score:2)
Have these been proven to work yet, much less be magnitudes faster?
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Nope. No calculations beyond extremely small ones were ever done on any QC. Currently, they fake things like factoring small numbers by doing almost all calculations outside of the QC.
Since they are all useless... (Score:2)
.. that does not mean much. They will remain useless for a long, long time and quite possibly forever as there is no known way to get them to scale.
Silent for years, now rushing 3months to release? (Score:2)