IBM Quantum Computer Simulates Real Magnetic Materials and Matches Lab Data (nerds.xyz) 18
"IBM says its quantum computer can now simulate real magnetic materials and match actual lab experiment results," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, "which is something people have been waiting years to see."
Instead of just theoretical output, the system reproduced neutron scattering data from a known material, meaning it lines up with real world physics. It still relies on a mix of quantum and classical computing and this is a narrow use case for now, but it is one of the first times quantum hardware has produced results that scientists can directly validate against experiments, which makes it a lot more interesting than the usual hype.
Classical computers "are not great at modeling quantum systems," according to this article at Nerds.xyz. "The math gets messy fast, and scientists end up relying on approximations... Quantum computers are supposed to solve that problem..." If this direction continues, it could start to matter in areas like superconductors, battery tech, and even drug development. Those are the kinds of problems where better simulations can actually lead to better outcomes, not just nicer charts in a research paper.
"I am extremely excited about what this means for science," said study co-author Allen Scheie from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In an announcement from IBM, Scheie calls this "the most impressive match I've seen between experimental data and qubit simulation, and it definitely raises the bar for what can be expected from quantum computers."
Classical computers "are not great at modeling quantum systems," according to this article at Nerds.xyz. "The math gets messy fast, and scientists end up relying on approximations... Quantum computers are supposed to solve that problem..." If this direction continues, it could start to matter in areas like superconductors, battery tech, and even drug development. Those are the kinds of problems where better simulations can actually lead to better outcomes, not just nicer charts in a research paper.
"I am extremely excited about what this means for science," said study co-author Allen Scheie from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In an announcement from IBM, Scheie calls this "the most impressive match I've seen between experimental data and qubit simulation, and it definitely raises the bar for what can be expected from quantum computers."
This is the QC we need! (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, we're seeing applications of QC that are actually useful. I look forward to this expanding so that we can greatly advance materials science by being able to simulate materials without ever having to construct them.
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I can't see how this - wrapping an experiment in a layer of abstraction - is any different from a "pure" experiment that simply records data, except that it is more complex.
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You probably can't see how because of the same vision problem that prevented you from reading my post.
"simulate materials without ever having to construct them."
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Yes, the vision problem known as "unlike you, I know what I'm talking about".
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Nothing about this article suggests that IBM is claiming they can replace real experimentation...yet. All it is saying that that they have had success, in this series of tests, of replicating results from real-world magnetic testing with Quantum modeling. It means nothing more than, hey, maybe this might work.
"This is the most impressive match I've seen between experimental data and qubit simulation, and it definitely raises the bar for what can be expected from quantum computers,” said study co-author Allen Scheie, condensed matter physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “I am extremely excited about what this means for science."
The goal of modeling things like magnetic materials using QC is a potentially very valuable one. If it can be proven to be accurate over time, it will greatly increase the ability to experiment with
IBM: The eternal punching bag of Big Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, let me get out infront of the comments that will be full of the usual “Big Blue is so 1970s” snark, because nothing says “edgy” like dunking on the company that literally built the infrastructure the entire digital world runs on.
But let’s be real for a second. While everyone was busy calling IBM boring, stodgy, or “the company your grandpa still uses,” they were out here creating one foundational technology after another:
The hard disk drive (1956 RAMAC — the first one ever)
The floppy disk that made personal computing actually personal
DRAM — the memory chips inside literally every device you own
The relational database and SQL that power basically the entire internet
Fortran, the first high-level programming language
Magnetic stripe cards (you know, the thing that made credit cards and ATMs work)
Silicon-germanium chips that make your smartphone’s Wi-Fi, GPS, and cellular actually fast
And while we’re on the subject of “irrelevant old tech”: over 87% of the world’s credit card transactions still run on IBM mainframes every single day. Your salary, your rent, your impulse buy at 2 a.m. — all of it humming along on the same “dinosaur” systems the cool kids love to mock.
So sure, pile on the hate. IBM’s used to it. They’ve been the Rodney Dangerfield of computing for decades: “No respect, no respect at all!” But every time you swipe a card, save a file, run a query, or (now) watch a quantum computer match real lab data on magnetic materials you’re standing on IBM’s shoulders. They didn’t just ride the wave. They built the ocean.
Keep innovating, Big Blue. The haters will be back next week to complain about something else you quietly made possible.
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I'm starting to get the sense that the next big hype is going to be Quantum Computing after people realize that the only people who use AI to make money are computer programmers, people making porn and scammers.
IBM's stock is down a lot rn, this might be a good time to buy if you belive in the company.
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You also forgot things like virtual memory - both in separating process address spaces and in using disk as memory, protected memory, memory management, and all leading up to virtual machines (partitions) letting you run multiple OSes on the same machine.
Some of IBM's latest mainframes are just wild in their I/O and interconnects. Even the CPU specs are just strange and off the charts.
About the most annoying this about IBM is that their names for stuff like this doesn't match what most people would call the
This is the first story I've heard about IBM (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this from 2023 different ? (Score:3)
"Quantum Computing Advance Begins New Era, IBM Says. A quantum computer came up with better answers to a physics problem than a conventional supercomputer."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/science/ibm-quantum-computing.html
More meaningless stunts (Score:2)
It seems meaningless stunts is all that the reminder of what once was "IBM Research" can produce these days.
So... (Score:2)
...all the previous simulations they did were fake and they now admit it?
Who cares? (Score:2)
Quantum computing is so yesterday. It's all AI today, baby!
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Topics that do not have much to do with each other at the moment.