MIT scientists build world's first scalable quantum computer

Again, the progress in these areas which include things like machine intelligence and robotics tells us, the world will soon undergo a drastic change. This is because these new technologies will not give us time to understand the full implication of what they can do like we had time with the internet. Future technologies will advance so rapidly, we will not be able to keep up. When you're building quantum computers and creating machines that are intelligent and will eventually be more intelligent than any human that has ever lived, this is the birth pains of the singularity.

Quantum computing now “much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question,” claims MIT professor Isaac Chuang

Computer scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Innsbruck in Austria say that they have put together the first five quantum bits (or qubits) of a quantum computer, capable of executing simple mathematical challenges.

The device is being tested on solving mathematical-factoring problems, which could eventually have implications for applications that use factoring as the basis for encryption to keep information, such as credit cards and sensitive data, secure.

While the proof of concept has only been applied to the number 15, the researchers claim that theirs is the "first scalable implementation" of quantum computing to solve Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm devised by Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT Peter Shor.

Chuang is a pioneer in the field of quantum computing. In 2001, he designed a quantum computer based on one molecule that could be held in 'superposition' and manipulated with nuclear magnetic resonance to factor the number 15. The results represented the first experimental realisation of Shor's algorithm. But the system wasn't scalable; it became more difficult to control the system as more atoms were added.

However, the architecture that Chuang and his team have put together is, he believes, highly scalable, and this scalability will enable them to build quantum computing devices capable of solving much bigger mathematical factors.

"It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build - you won't be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop any time soon - but now it's much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question," said Chuang.

www.computing.co.uk...

This is how technology evolves. It starts slow, it's then sprinkled here or there then bam, everyone is on the internet or has a personal computer. We're getting closer to that bam moment but like I said, we will be dealing with technologies that will evolve faster than we can understand them.

For instance when you look at artificial intelligence. It's already here and is becoming a bigger part of our lives everyday. One day we will look up and artificial intelligence will be everywhere like the internet. Here's a couple of articles that give you some examples.

10 Examples of Artificial Intelligence You’re Using in Daily Life

beebom.com...

5 Places You Can See The Robot Takeover Happening Right Now

www.cheatsheet.com...

What did Google buy a year or so ago? An altair?

Realistically we're at the same point as the late 1940's early 1950's with many different people having many different ideas and once a few ideas get put together we'll be a lot better off.

Quantum computers also speak to the nature of reality. Are quantum computers doing calculations in parallel universes? It's a question that Physicist are asking and people like Oxford's David Deutsch is pushing.

a reply to: neoholographic

All of those examples of AI are pretty sad. None of them work very well. And Siri or Alexa are just annoying. I feel like an idiot talking to my phone in public, and because it never gets anything right -- I never bother when alone either.

Predictive purchasing? Not so much for me. It seems to only show me something I've already bought.

Online help? Painful. Just give me a real person, as these AI "chat assistants" can't do much of anything but waste your time. At most, they'll eventually reveal the actual phone number you need to talk to a real human.

I'm bitter about technology, as I truly feel that the "good stuff" is being hidden from us. I really do think that we could have fully-functional AI, totally immersive VR (images transmitted via optic nerve) and other things...but we don't...

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: neoholographic

All of those examples of AI are pretty sad. None of them work very well. And Siri or Alexa are just annoying. I feel like an idiot talking to my phone in public, and because it never gets anything right -- I never bother when alone either.

Predictive purchasing? Not so much for me. It seems to only show me something I've already bought.

Online help? Painful. Just give me a real person, as these AI "chat assistants" can't do much of anything but waste your time. At most, they'll eventually reveal the actual phone number you need to talk to a real human.

I'm bitter about technology, as I truly feel that the "good stuff" is being hidden from us. I really do think that we could have fully-functional AI, totally immersive VR (images transmitted via optic nerve) and other things...but we don't...

Who is hiding this "good stuff"? Do you realise the manpower it would take to contain all of the world's scientists and keep all the good things they discover hidden and have no leaks? Let's get real..

As far as quantum computers...i found the concept astounding. Here we have one of nature's oddest (yet 100% true) processes that happen at the particle level being manipulated by man to perform calculations. If, and I personally think we have a LONG way to go still, they can get quantum computers to work it will be amazing. Man is amazing. So is science.

a reply to: 3danimator2014

Not really. Do you remember holographic hard drive storage? Promising steps were being taken forwards and then *poof*.

The MIC takes patents and makes them classified all the time in the "interest of national security". If you aren't working for a huge company that has the funding to fuel your research, you'd just look like a loon claiming we have this or that technology.

You seem to be under the impression that every scientist out there would somehow be "in" on any kind of breakthrough. You realize that some of the biggest military contractors recruit before people even graduate college, right? The government itself (outside of DARPA) doesn't do the research...companies like Lockheed and Raytheon do -- and the NDA's and paperwork you sign to work for these companies are pretty air tight.

The scientists we see in the public sphere are the "junior varsity" team. The real top-notch guys aren't even known by the public, nor will they be.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: 3danimator2014

Not really. Do you remember holographic hard drive storage? Promising steps were being taken forwards and then *poof*.

The MIC takes patents and makes them classified all the time in the "interest of national security". If you aren't working for a huge company that has the funding to fuel your research, you'd just look like a loon claiming we have this or that technology.

You seem to be under the impression that every scientist out there would somehow be "in" on any kind of breakthrough. You realize that some of the biggest military contractors recruit before people even graduate college, right? The government itself (outside of DARPA) doesn't do the research...companies like Lockheed and Raytheon do -- and the NDA's and paperwork you sign to work for these companies are pretty air tight.

The scientists we see in the public sphere are the "junior varsity" team. The real top-notch guys aren't even known by the public, nor will they be.

I'm not denying that some nice tech is being kept from us, but i don't believe that its THAT far ahead of what we have. Holographic drives you say..ok, lets go with that example. Are you suggesting that every single person involved with that has been roped into working for the government or government contracts? What about any new people who stumble into that particular field? Do they ALL get scooped up?

Maybe its just that holographic storage hit a brick all and after the excitement of it all, the reality is that its harder than we thought. I don't know anything about this subject, but my point would work with anything.

I do not believe that death rays, anti gravity machines, ufo tech or anything like that is being hidden from us. There are just FAR too many scientists and engineers in the world to all keep quiet. Couple that with huge companies wanting to make LOTS of money from anything cool like that..i say its impossible to keep them from the general public.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I believe the same way.

Where they really are tech wise who knows.

a reply to: neoholographic

Rather than AI, it seems to me that the major implication for this particular research is its ability to make asymmetric encryption obsolete. By being able to quickly factor large numbers, some current crypto technology, like a Public Key Infrastructure (certificates), would be easy to circumvent.

This is not to say that AI won't benefit from these breakthroughs as well. But from a planning perspective, entities with a need for long-term secrecy have to take this future weakness into account.

Also, for the sake of public disclosure, you have been instrumental in changing my perspective on the implications of AI.

-dex

Seems like an attention grab rather than new information.
D-Wave broke the 1000 Qubit barrier in July of 2015 and is far more powerful then what they are talking about here.
Rumors that military versions have gone a lot farther than that.
This is going to be one of the machines that will be so much more advanced in secret than you will ever hear about publicly, like all ultra bleeding tech.

a reply to: charlyv

What?

These are researchers from MIT, they're not trying to get clicks on a messageboard.

First, let me say, D-Wave is very, very important and the work that's being done with Google and D-Wave is important. This is something totally different.

This is talking about a scalable quantum computer that can solve Shor's algorithm. This is like the Holy Grail in quantum computing. Here's more from D-Wave and the MIT researchers.

Although our machine cannot run Shor's algorithm, it has factorised integers tens of thousands of times larger than the integers factored by any other quantum computer currently available.

www.dwavesys.com...

While the proof of concept has only been applied to the number 15, the researchers claim that theirs is the "first scalable implementation" of quantum computing to solve Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm devised by Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT Peter Shor.

HUGE NEWS if you know anything about quantum computing.

If they could scale this up like the researchers say, then it's a whole new ball game when it comes to encryption and the nature of reality. Either parallel universes exists or subatomic particles behave as if parallel universes exist because the computation has to come from somewhere.

Here's MIT Professor Max Tegmark talking about this. The whole video is interesting and he starts talking about quantum mechanics and quantum computers at the 10:20 mark.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: 3danimator2014

Not really. Do you remember holographic hard drive storage? Promising steps were being taken forwards and then *poof*.

Well, you don't really need that, right? Look at the great advances in semiconductor storage. You'll have 20TB SSD notebook drives in, oh...(checks watch)...3 years or so.

The MIC takes patents and makes them classified all the time in the "interest of national security". If you aren't working for a huge company that has the funding to fuel your research, you'd just look like a loon claiming we have this or that technology.

Actually, it's Group 220 that does that. You can, however, tag it to go there first. For Lockheed, they'd pay attention to it.

You seem to be under the impression that every scientist out there would somehow be "in" on any kind of breakthrough. You realize that some of the biggest military contractors recruit before people even graduate college, right?

So does the gubmint.

The government itself (outside of DARPA) doesn't do the research...companies like Lockheed and Raytheon do -- and the NDA's and paperwork you sign to work for these companies are pretty air tight.

DARPA doesn't do a lot of research, they contract it done. About the only research they do is "what is the next big deal"

OTOH, you do have national labs where a lot of stuff gets done, technically they're companies but it's also sort of totally government. Other companies might as well be government agencies(coffLeidoscoff).

eta: I see samsung just released a nearly 20TB SSD this week. It won't be affordable. But real soon, you'll see the next version of FLASH come out, and voila! it'll be quaint to think about 1TB notebook drives. Watch.

originally posted by: charlyv
Seems like an attention grab rather than new information.
D-Wave broke the 1000 Qubit barrier in July of 2015 and is far more powerful then what they are talking about here.

This is actually a quantum computer, instead of an annealer.

a reply to: Bedlam

Well, I think for AI quantum processing combined with holographic storage would work well -- I have a feeling it might closer imitate how the human brain handles information.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: Bedlam

Well, I think for AI quantum processing combined with holographic storage would work well -- I have a feeling it might closer imitate how the human brain handles information.

I always visualized that for a rewrite of Colossus. Quantum optical processing combined with holographic storage. No electronics, just photons.

Dangerous stuff maybe, but also awesome progression .
How long will it take before we got this stuff ourselves, lime a quantum desktop.

If it's more like a brain then we might see braintransplantation in the near future.

Yikes the word sounds scary. .

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: charlyv

What?

These are researchers from MIT, they're not trying to get clicks on a messageboard.

First, let me say, D-Wave is very, very important and the work that's being done with Google and D-Wave is important. This is something totally different.

This is talking about a scalable quantum computer that can solve Shor's algorithm. This is like the Holy Grail in quantum computing. Here's more from D-Wave and the MIT researchers.

Although our machine cannot run Shor's algorithm, it has factorised integers tens of thousands of times larger than the integers factored by any other quantum computer currently available.

www.dwavesys.com...

While the proof of concept has only been applied to the number 15, the researchers claim that theirs is the "first scalable implementation" of quantum computing to solve Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm devised by Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT Peter Shor.

HUGE NEWS if you know anything about quantum computing.

If they could scale this up like the researchers say, then it's a whole new ball game when it comes to encryption and the nature of reality. Either parallel universes exists or subatomic particles behave as if parallel universes exist because the computation has to come from somewhere.

Here's MIT Professor Max Tegmark talking about this. The whole video is interesting and he starts talking about quantum mechanics and quantum computers at the 10:20 mark.

The point remains. D-Wave has been the ONLY producer of scale-able computers up to this point. I have nothing against MIT and the greatest minds there boggle us all the time. MIT's scale-able technology is focused on verifying against their own specification, Shor's algorithm, also an MIT production. Quantum computing is in it's infancy, and we really have no idea which approach will be the winner that leads to scale-able technologies run that resulted in our current conventional systems, however D-Wave has really shown the world how to start such a standard.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Either the "good stuff" is being hidden from us, or we have been robbed of our real potential by the constant waste of war and greed. Either way, we do not possess something that should be here.

What I find extremely interesting, and also extremely worrying, is that the general belief is that black projects and ultra-bleeding-edge government research tends to be 10-20 years ahead of the public sector. I look at what we have now, and what he had ten, and especially fifteen or twenty years ago, and the difference is vast. And the rate of technological progress seems to be accelerating. Perhaps not quite exponentially, but getting faster and faster.

Just what the hell is being hidden behind closed doors?

originally posted by: Eilasvaleleyn

Just what the hell is being hidden behind closed doors?

Some of them, not much.

Others, well, you'll never see it in your lifetime unless you get Captain Candid in the White house, and he survives the first few assassination attempts.