"Crucial hurdle overcome in Quantum computing" - the future is now (or at least tomorrow)

The University of New South Wales in Sydney has news about an advance in the potential of Quantum computing which I thought would interest people here. I'm not science or computer savvy enough to summarize it or comment extensively. Leave it to the Aussies to break new ground, hurrah!

phys.org...

"What we have is a game changer," said team leader Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor and Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW.

"We've demonstrated a two-qubit logic gate - the central building block of a quantum computer - and, significantly, done it in silicon. Because we use essentially the same device technology as existing computer chips, we believe it will be much easier to manufacture a full-scale processor chip than for any of the leading designs, which rely on more exotic technologies.

"This makes the building of a quantum computer much more feasible, since it is based on the same manufacturing technology as today's computer industry," he added.

The Daily Mail chimes in, like a quantum bird:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

A major step towards building quantum computers capable of performing formidable calculations at a fraction of the speed of current machines has been achieved.

Computer scientists claim to have made a 'game-changing leap' by building a logic gate – a building block of a digital circuit – using the strange properties of subatomic particles in silicon.

They say these could eventually lead to new types of quantum microchips that would revolutionise the digital world.

This, mixed with other recent advances, seems to be a hint of letting the horse run without its reins to see how fast it can make the gallop. If I were a betting man I'd place a nickel down on the success of the technology spun off this one.

Only one question remains then. When can I plug into a better matrix than this one?

Using silicon based tech is great too for the existing hardware.

Now taking applications for quantum programmer.



a reply to: Aleister

originally posted by: Athetos
Only one question remains then. When can I plug into a better matrix than this one?

Using silicon based tech is great too for the existing hardware.

Now taking applications for quantum programmer.

a reply to: Aleister

We wont need programmers. It will program for us...or it =)

a reply to: Athetos

"Silicon" Valley emits a sigh of relief that it will get to keep its name for awhile and not sound too 20th century (like 20th Century Fox, what's up with that?) Can someone with more computer knowledge than the average Martian mouse give us a primer on what this will do, when it will do it, and why it's more than just a toss-up. Thanks.

a reply to: Aleister

How will this Breakthrough effect the Advancement of A.I. in the Robotics Field and Social Infrastructure Management ?

fantastic that they were able to engineer a process that continues to utilize the supply chain of such an abundant material as silicone. That should be a +1 for the consumer when it comes time to price the product (one could hope).

Great we can all say goodbye to any last hopes of data protection if this really works..

All encryption will be pretty useless.

originally posted by: MrMasterMinder
Great we can all say goodbye to any last hopes of data protection if this really works..

All encryption will be pretty useless.

Not all encryption. Quantum computers will be able to break encryption algorithms which rely on the integer factorization problem, the discrete logarithm problem, or the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem, but most symmetric ciphers and hash functions will remain perfectly secure. So it will be things like public key cryptography which get broken. Of course that will still break most website security so it's important to have a backup plan, and there is such a plan, it's called post-quantum cryptography. This is very important for applications such as Bitcoin which rely on elliptic curve cryptography to sign transactions. If quantum computers become a reality then Bitcoin will be forced to undergo a hardfork in which the signing algorithm is updated to a quantum-resistant algorithm such as the Merkle Signature Scheme.

The advantage of the Merkle Signature Scheme is that it is believed to be resistant against quantum computer algorithms. The traditional public key algorithms, such as RSA and ELGamal would become insecure in case an effective quantum computer can be built (due to Shor's algorithm). The Merkle Signature Scheme however only depends on the existence of secure hash functions. This makes the Merkle Signature Scheme very adjustable and resistant to quantum computing.

Merkle signature scheme

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

But just think of everything that's ever been encrypted using the existing method. We all know the NSA has daily snap shots of the entire internet.

Yaaawn! Yet? Life doesn't exist without simple water. ...Talk about "Jedi mind F'ing" things, . .. It's cute, we create stuff, that does "stuff". .. Nothing new, under the sun. Yaaaawwwnn! May as well spit into the wind.

originally posted by: MrMasterMinder
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

But just think of everything that's ever been encrypted using the existing method. We all know the NSA has daily snap shots of the entire internet.

Well luckily most files are encrypted with symmetric algorithms, usually public key cryptography is just used for signing or exchanging a key for a symmetric encryption session. I think the main damage will be caused by people who don't update their encryption algorithms fast enough because they don't keep up with technological advancements.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

You sound like you know quite a lot about cryptography, however I know that quantum computers are capable of nearly instantaneous calculations, where hashes that might take 27 years to crack, could be cracked within a few minutes or less on a quantum computer. How do these new crypto algorithms take into account the speed at which a quantum computer can process data?

As far as I'm aware, password encryption works on the concept that it takes too long to crack for anyone to bother. Is there such a solution that would prevent this kind of brute-force, seeing as a quantum computer would eat through every algorithm currently used on every site on the web.

a reply to: Aedaeum

It would be an oversimplification to say that quantum computers can do everything faster than a classical computer. I'm not exactly an expert on quantum computers but as I understand it they are only better at solving specific problems, for example finding one entry in a large database or solving specific mathematical problems. But there are other problems where quantum computers will perform the same or even worse than traditional computers, which is why traditional processors will never really become obsolete.

Even if you have a quantum computer you still need to write algorithms for it and not all traditional algorithms have a quantum analog. What I predict will happen is that we will end up having hybrid computers which have a traditional processor used to run traditional algorithms and also a quantum processor used to run algorithms specifically coded to exploit quantum superposition, kind of like how computers now have a separate graphics processing unit (GPU) for doing highly parallel graphics calculations.

originally posted by: Aedaeum
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

You sound like you know quite a lot about cryptography, however I know that quantum computers are capable of nearly instantaneous calculations, where hashes that might take 27 years to crack, could be cracked within a few minutes or less on a quantum computer. How do these new crypto algorithms take into account the speed at which a quantum computer can process data?

As far as I'm aware, password encryption works on the concept that it takes too long to crack for anyone to bother. Is there such a solution that would prevent this kind of brute-force, seeing as a quantum computer would eat through every algorithm currently used on every site on the web.

Good points and this is true.

This is why these things will be rolled out slowly. You will not have a quantum computer on the market until some infrastructure problems are addressed because nobodies passwords today will be protected from a quantum computer running a simple search algorithm.

Quantum computers will be able to do a lot of things classical computers can't do. You have scientist saying in order to have true machine intelligence you need to equip a classical computer with quantum circuitry. If quantum computers reach their intended capacity this could also point to parallel universes because there isn't enough subatomic particles in the universe to carry out some of these calculations so the theory is some of the calculations will come from subatomic particles in other universes. So it would be easy to simulate the entire classical universe on a quantum computer. This gets into things like ancestor simulations and Nick Bostrom. A quantum computer would be so powerful, we would be able to make multiple exact simulations of our universe.

Here a video on quantum computers.

Geordie Rose, Founder of D-Wave (recent clients are Google and NASA) believes that the power of quantum computing is that we can `exploit parallel universes’ to solve problems that we have no other means of confirming. Simply put, quantum computers can think exponentially faster and simultaneously such that as they mature they will out pace us. Listen to his talk now!



This is a very interesting presentation and it explains why companies from Google to places like NASA want quantum computers.

originally posted by: Athetos
Only one question remains then. When can I plug into a better matrix than this one?

Using silicon based tech is great too for the existing hardware.

Now taking applications for quantum programmer.

a reply to: Aleister

You just need to update your cultural operating system, and install some new plugins for additional feature support. I'm running "EVERYTHING IS AWESOME reality 4.0" with plugin support for magic, paranormal and UFOs.

Well. This isn't disturbing.