[Infowarrior] - Quantum Supercomputer to be unveiled

[Richard Forno]

Quantum Leap: Computer to 'Make Computer History'
Canadian Firm Promises Computer Based on Quantum Physics, Many Times Faster
Than World's Best
By NED POTTER
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=2864363

Feb. 12, 2007 ‹ - "Quantum Computing." It's one of those things that bring a
sparkle to the eyes of propellerheads -- and make the rest of us just
scratch our heads.

But it's been a holy grail in the arcane world of supercomputers -- and a
Canadian firm claims it will be unveiling one on Tuesday. Nevermind that
most engineers thought quantum computers were decades away.

D-Wave Systems, Inc., based near Vancouver, is the company that's been
working on the project. Its machine is described as a computer that can
perform 64,000 calculations at once.

Following the odd laws of quantum mechanics, the digital "bits" that race
through its circuits will be able to stand for 0 or 1 at the same time,
allowing the machine, eventually, to do work that is orders of magnitude
more complex than what today's computers can do.

"There are certain classes of problems that can't be solved with digital
computers," said Herb Martin, the firm's CEO, over a decidedly-noisy digital
cell phone. "Digital computers are good at running programs; quantum
computers are good at handling massive sets of variables."

Coming Soon to a Store Near You?

So will you or I be able to have one soon? Will it come as a laptop?

The answers, for now, are no, and no. The current prototype, says Martin, is
as big as a good-sized freezer, and a lot colder. It uses superconducting
circuits that have to be refrigerated, close to absolute zero. That's the
kind of temperature at which electrical resistance fades nearly to nothing
(think of the heat generated by a conventional laptop), so that massive
calculations can be done.

What sorts? Martin says, for instance, that a quantum computer could be used
to design genetically based drugs (remember that the DNA in every human cell
has 3 billion "base pairs," or "rungs" on that famous helical ladder).

Or it could be used by companies to manage their supply chains. "Think,"
says Martin, "of a company that has 40 factories and makes a million
different parts. That's a lot to keep track of."

Quantum computers could also have major uses in the security world. Since
9/11, governments and companies have gotten heavily into biometrics,
building massive databases of pictures, fingerprints, and other complex
measures of people they want to track. If someone on a terrorism watch list
passes a security checkpoint at an airport, a quantum computer could
presumably be very fast at comparing his or her picture to the massive
databases of pictures stored by security agencies.

Reality Check

Will this actually happen any time soon? Much of the computing world is
skeptical. Major companies, such as IBM and NEC, have done years of research
without results so far.

Even Seth Lloyd of MIT, a computer scientist whose research is cited as a
major source of D-Wave's work, has been quoted as saying that while he's
happy they're trying, he'll wait to see what they've done.

So don't go online in search of a quantum machine any time soon. But don't
be surprised if, at some time in the future, you can go online to a search
engine which just happens to be powered by this very strange technology.

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