IBM Wants To Build a 100,000-Qubit Quantum Computer (technologyreview.com) 27
IBM has announced its goal to build a 100,000-qubit quantum computing machine within the next 10 years in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago. MIT Technology Review reports: Late last year, IBM took the record for the largest quantum computing system with a processor that contained 433 quantum bits, or qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum information processing. Now, the company has set its sights on a much bigger target: a 100,000-qubit machine that it aims to build within 10 years. IBM made the announcement on May 22 at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. The company will partner with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago in a $100 million dollar initiative to push quantum computing into the realm of full-scale operation, where the technology could potentially tackle pressing problems that no standard supercomputer can solve.
Or at least it can't solve them alone. The idea is that the 100,000 qubits will work alongside the best "classical" supercomputers to achieve new breakthroughs in drug discovery, fertilizer production, battery performance, and a host of other applications. "I call this quantum-centric supercomputing," IBM's VP of quantum, Jay Gambetta, told MIT Technology Review in an in-person interview in London last week. [...] IBM has already done proof-of-principle experiments (PDF) showing that integrated circuits based on "complementary metal oxide semiconductor" (CMOS) technology can be installed next to the cold qubits to control them with just tens of milliwatts. Beyond that, he admits, the technology required for quantum-centric supercomputing does not yet exist: that is why academic research is a vital part of the project.
The qubits will exist on a type of modular chip that is only just beginning to take shape in IBM labs. Modularity, essential when it will be impossible to put enough qubits on a single chip, requires interconnects that transfer quantum information between modules. IBM's "Kookaburra," a 1,386-qubit multichip processor with a quantum communication link, is under development and slated for release in 2025. Other necessary innovations are where the universities come in. Researchers at Tokyo and Chicago have already made significant strides in areas such as components and communication innovations that could be vital parts of the final product, Gambetta says. He thinks there will likely be many more industry-academic collaborations to come over the next decade. "We have to help the universities do what they do best," he says.
Or at least it can't solve them alone. The idea is that the 100,000 qubits will work alongside the best "classical" supercomputers to achieve new breakthroughs in drug discovery, fertilizer production, battery performance, and a host of other applications. "I call this quantum-centric supercomputing," IBM's VP of quantum, Jay Gambetta, told MIT Technology Review in an in-person interview in London last week. [...] IBM has already done proof-of-principle experiments (PDF) showing that integrated circuits based on "complementary metal oxide semiconductor" (CMOS) technology can be installed next to the cold qubits to control them with just tens of milliwatts. Beyond that, he admits, the technology required for quantum-centric supercomputing does not yet exist: that is why academic research is a vital part of the project.
The qubits will exist on a type of modular chip that is only just beginning to take shape in IBM labs. Modularity, essential when it will be impossible to put enough qubits on a single chip, requires interconnects that transfer quantum information between modules. IBM's "Kookaburra," a 1,386-qubit multichip processor with a quantum communication link, is under development and slated for release in 2025. Other necessary innovations are where the universities come in. Researchers at Tokyo and Chicago have already made significant strides in areas such as components and communication innovations that could be vital parts of the final product, Gambetta says. He thinks there will likely be many more industry-academic collaborations to come over the next decade. "We have to help the universities do what they do best," he says.
Slowing pace (Score:3)
Re: Slowing pace (Score:1)
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This should have been university at Urbana. HAL9000 anyone?
"I'm sorry Dave. I cannot allow that to happen."
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No, they have not. They are faking it.
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IBM had been achieving a doubling every 12 months. This announcement portends instead a doubling every 18 months going forward.
I assume this is true, but they just got to 433 Qbits and that's actually not very useful. The current state of quantum computing is kind of like building a teleportation device out of the movie "The Fly" and it's various sequels, not something like out of Star Trek. And you've reached the point where you can send an electronic signal from one device to the other, the signal is just a signal and it's not anything close to being the data needed to transport even an insect.
Some physicists thought th
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Quantum processors have a lot more properties than just the number of qubits. IBMs 400 qubits aren't fully connected.
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Based on that attitude, one might assume that you live in your parents basement and you never leave because life is hard outside and it's not worth the effort to go upstairs.
64k qubits. (Score:4, Funny)
64k qubits ought to be enough for anybody.
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who gets in way quicker with my hilarious comment.
Excitement! (Score:2)
Someone please explain IBM to me. (Score:2)
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IBM has four business segments: Software, Consulting, Infrastructure, and Financing. Software (including RedHat) is about 40% of total revenue, Consulting (whatever that means) is about 30%, Infrastructure (i.e., Big Iron mainframes and the like) is 25%, and Financing is the sliver that remains.
Their R
But,,, (Score:2)
Analyzing cow poop with state of the art tech (Score:2)
So much for the Star Trek vision of the future.
Bullshit (Score:2)
Also note how they do not tell you how many effective qbits that will be (orders of magnitude less) and how many steps before it decoheres (probably not many). At this time, these things are completely useless for doing any real calculations and that will not change anytime soon.
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I would like Microsoft to start to make secure, reliable and well performing operating systems and office software. As 10 years for that seems to be just too ludicrous even for a joke, I will put the time goal as "this century".
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I would like Microsoft to start to make secure, reliable and well performing operating systems and office software.
Oh come on now, that's just being silly compared to the previous two wishes. If you're not going to take this seriously...
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I admit I was trolling there. My apologies.
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I don't think you can presume that they won't manage in increase the coherence time. There are several different approaches that have promise in that direction. (OTOH, they involve very different approaches, so it's hard to use improvements in one of the tech lines the improve the performance in one of the others. I mean we're talking differences as great and one approach storing state in electron spin states in a crystal and another in circulating beams of photons. And that's just two.)
IBM is a joke (Score:2)
This is just a grift to pump their share price long enough for whoever is CEO to say he did something useful in his tenure and hop over to Yum Brands before the whole shit sinks into the ocean.
IBM is done son.
Very praiseworthy (Score:2)
Why Not (Score:1)
Why not 131,072 qbits?