Google’s new quantum computer is '100 million times faster than your PC'

Google made the announcement and this isn't a surprise. When you have NASA, Google, Lockheed Martin and other big players continuing to invest in D Wave as qubit's increase, there not doing it for nothing.

Google and NASA have been working on a lightning-fast quantum computer that is 3,600 times faster than a supercomputer at solving complex problems.

Has Google won the race to build the world’s first commercial quantum computer?

The technology company’s artificial intelligence lab believe they may finally have proof that their opinion-dividing quantum computer actually works.

Google and Nasa announced they were collaborating on the D-Wave X2 quantum computer, which they say is 100 million times faster than a conventional computer chip, in 2013. It can answer certain algorithms in seconds rather than years.

Google director of engineering, Hartmut Neven, said: “For a specific, carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem we achieve a 100-million-fold speed-up.”

www.telegraph.co.uk...



These are the first steps but things are getting real interesting. These computers from D Wave have been scaling up consistently so they will be even more powerful in 5 years.

a reply to: neoholographic

More isn't always better; nor is faster.

a reply to: NewzNose

More isn't always better; nor is faster.

In context to computing can you elaborate?

originally posted by: neoholographic

I remember pics of computers as big as these from many years ago, and now even a tiny wrist watch is more powerful than they were, just imagine how big these puters will be in a few years!

a reply to: neoholographic

Cue Terminator theme music.

Oh God... the question is, who is going to have access to these guys? Probably the government and corporations at first. They would be great at sifting through mass surveillance data. Maybe they will trickle down to the common man if the technology moves fast enough to give us the older stuff. Imagine one of these babies being used to simulate a neural network for AI...

originally posted by: darkbake
Oh God... the question is, who is going to have access to these guys? Probably the government and corporations at first. They would be great at sifting through mass surveillance data. Maybe they will trickle down to the common man if the technology moves fast enough to give us the older stuff. Imagine one of these babies being used to simulate a neural network for AI...

It is a double edged sword for the NSA. They are implementing quantum to perfect real time data analysis. Also, the bad guys are going to use quantum to encrypt. The only way you could effectively decrypt, is with a faster quantum computer.

originally posted by: NewzNose
a reply to: neoholographic

More isn't always better; nor is faster.

I beg to differ, faster is always better if the prerequisite quality is satisfactory.

More is always better if the return overtakes the upward vector of investment.

They've been storing all that data in places like utah waiting for these computers to be built.

All that data will be inputs for equations to determine who is violent and when they will be.

Something very strange about it. Being quantum is always so weird and spooky and yet not classic, it astounds me it somehow has a classical use? What so quantum isn't just quantum?

Something about search algorithms. Given you know the locations of things and you wnat the quickest route.... I don't know if that's what they're referring to you. It's probably not. But it's one thing I"ve read about.

I once had a strange dream. I read sentence which said "Your zones can retrieve the way you're doing it." Hmm. Why do I even bring that up? Idk. How does a zone retrieve the way we're doing it?

Sorry being so random. I don't know how to reply. I feel kind of like a frog being slowly boiled, but I don't know if it'll ever boil.

A link might help:
www.wired.com - Everywhere in a Flash: The Quantum Physics of Photosynthesis...

“The analogy I like is if you have three ways of driving home through rush hour traffic. On any given day, you take only one. You don’t know if the other routes would be quicker or slower. But in quantum mechanics, you can take all three of these routes simultaneously. You don’t specify where you are until you arrive, so you always choose the quickest route,” said Greg Scholes, a University of Toronto biophysicist."

If you're like me you just wnat to go to bed NOW.

in a very basic nutshell: Quantum computers are targeted at iterative and recursive problems. In conventional computing we converge on iterative solutions by winding intermediate results on a stack inside a function, and when the function completes, we repetitively continue that process by walking that stack, until it is empty.

In a quantum computer, with a sufficient number of Qubits, this entire recursive process can occur almost simultaneously. Speed with no equal in conventional computing, even when using massively parallel CPU networks.

The funny thing was:

Nobody KNEW if these computers really used quantum effects, just because D-Wave stated they did. There was no prove, which made NASA and Google form a devision for the development of testings and standards.

a reply to: neoholographic

I would be very careful in comparing this "computer" with a PC.

All it can do by design is quantum annealing (finding/reaching a minimum from a set of states), which can be used to solve certain optimization problems. It doesn't do any actual computing as such.

So it is like calling a wind tunnel a fluid dynamics computer.

a reply to: NewzNose

Agree with you completely on that, in fact I am wondering how many jobs these monstrosities are going to kill off?

I wonder when reading this if at some point in the future of the earth, aliens will actually arrive and simply find huge boxes of computers chatting to each other and nothing else alive, as it will all have been made redundant by these boxy brains.

Will I still be able to go to aol™ chat rooms and can I still play My Pong™ game?

a reply to: neoholographic

So is this the first proper steps to having our very own Dep Thought? (a la Hitchhikers Guide).

On a side note, i'm loving the thread title - for the record, an abacus is faster than my current computer!

a reply to: darkbake

One of the first commercial uses for these, will be speeding up the already impossibly fast High Volume Trading market by a factor of "Holy CRAP!".

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: darkbake

One of the first commercial uses for these, will be speeding up the already impossibly fast High Volume Trading market by a factor of "Holy CRAP!".

Not really, its amazing for offline work, but everything via internet is restricted by hardware.
You're fiber optics transfer speeds are moving in slowmotion compared to these beasts.

So unless we can get quadrillion gigabyte internet transfers...

I wonder how fast it can sift through everyones opinions in the united states and return back real data numbers. I bet Trump has one of these bad boys to let him know precisely what to say everytime he gets out of bed. Ban all muslims? Sure, the facebook stats just came through--people think illogically and are controlled by fear. With a computer this good Trump won't have to think at all

originally posted by: charlyv
in a very basic nutshell: Quantum computers are targeted at iterative and recursive problems. In conventional computing we converge on iterative solutions by winding intermediate results on a stack inside a function, and when the function completes, we repetitively continue that process by walking that stack, until it is empty.

In a quantum computer, with a sufficient number of Qubits, this entire recursive process can occur almost simultaneously. Speed with no equal in conventional computing, even when using massively parallel CPU networks.

I've progrmamed most of my life. Something about this is still strange. I'm not an expert, but "iterative" and "recursive" are not new to me.

Like this actually "explains" anything:
en.wikipedia.org - Quantum annealing...

I can't get over the fact in traditional computing you have to process things. Here, you kind of don't. Is like hte answer already exists. It seems to me we're just learning how to converse to get it. We're only constrained by the fact it takes time to produce a question to get an answer.

I get it. Swamp me with this and I'll shut up:

a quantum-mechanical superposition of all possible states (candidate states) with equal weights. Then the system evolves following the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, a natural quantum-mechanical evolution of physical systems. The amplitudes of all candidate states keep changing, realizing a quantum parallelism, according to the time-dependent strength of the transverse field, which causes quantum tunneling between states. If the rate of change of the transverse-field is slow enough, the system stays close to the ground state of the instantaneous Hamiltonian, i.e., adiabatic quantum computation.[4] The transverse field is finally switched off, and the system is expected to have reached the ground state of the classical Ising model that corresponds to the solution to the original optimization problem.

The problem with sciency terms is they sometimes don't really explain what's occurring. When you're first starting to learn it's counter. And the experts try to simplify it for you but it's usually incorrect somehow. Conclusion? To understand this you kind of have to be an expert.