homehome Home chatchat Notifications


IBM moving one step closer to quantum computers

IBM claims to be one step closer to developing functional, scalable quantum computers. According to the company, they managed to overcome two key hurdles, demonstrating for the first time a new, square quantum bit circuit design - the only physical architecture that could successfully scale to larger dimensions.

Henry Conrad
April 29, 2015 @ 7:02 am

share Share

IBM claims to be one step closer to developing functional, scalable quantum computers. According to the company, they managed to overcome two key hurdles, demonstrating for the first time a new, square quantum bit circuit design – the only physical architecture that could successfully scale to larger dimensions.

Image via Wikipedia.

Quantum computing has been hailed by many as the future of computing, and for good reason. While traditional computing (like the one you are using right now to read this) works on bits, basic units on information that can have 2 different values (0 or 1), quantum computing works on qubits (quantum bits). A qubit is a two-state quantum-mechanical system, and can be in a superposition of both states at the same time, a property which is fundamental to quantum computing. To overly simplify it, qubits can simply contain more information than bits. Naturally, that would allow for better and faster processing, upgrading computing to unprecedented heights. Just so you can get an idea of how powerful they could be, a computer with just 50 qubits would pretty much outperform any supercomputer that exists today.

“Quantum computing could be potentially transformative, enabling us to solve problems that are impossible or impractical to solve today,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research. While quantum computers have traditionally been explored for cryptography, one area we find very compelling is the potential for practical quantum systems to solve problems in physics and quantum chemistry that are unsolvable today. This could have enormous potential in materials or drug design, opening up a new realm of applications.”

But as you can probably guess, actually creating a quantum computer can be really difficult – as all things tend to be when dealing with the quantum world – but several companies and universities are investing massive resources and time into this project. The two breakthroughs IBM announced are:

  • the ability to detect and measure both kinds of quantum errors simultaneously, and
  • the demonstration of a square qubit circuit design.

Quantum errors are generated either by heat, radiation or defects – all of which you’d expect to have within a processor, so the ability of detecting and measuring them is crucial. Until now, researchers could only search for bit-flip or phase-flip errors at a time, not both simultaneously.

The second claim is perhaps even more intriguing – IBM’s novel and complex quantum bit circuit, based on a square lattice of four superconducting qubits on a chip less than 2 square cm (about a square inch), which would ultimately allow scalable quantum processors. It’s actually this square array (as opposed to a linear one) that allowed them to search and detect errors. The fact that it’s also scalable almost seems to good to believe.

IBM is not the only tech giant in the race for developing a quantum computer – IBM, Google and Microsoft have all jumped in, as have some of the world’s leading Universities. It remains to be seen where the fire will ultimately burn, but we can already see the sparks. Here are some of the other articles we’ve written about advancements in the field:

A paper on the research will appear in the April 29 issue of Nature Communications.

share Share

A Massive Fraud Ring Is Publishing Thousands of Fake Studies and the Problem is Exploding. “These Networks Are Essentially Criminal Organizations”

Organized misconduct is rapidly poisoning the global scientific record.

Scientists Spied on Great Tits All Winter and Caught Them Drifting Apart Toward Divorce

Bird couples drift apart long before they split, Oxford study finds.

A Digital Artist Rebuilt the Shroud of Turin. Turns Out The Shroud Might Not Show a Real Body at All

New 3D analysis suggests the Shroud of Turin was imprinted from sculpture, not a human body.

Distant Exoplanet Triggers Stellar Flares and Triggers Its Own Destruction

HIP 67522 b can’t stop blasting itself in the face with stellar flares, a type of magnetic interaction that scientists have spent decades looking for.

Elephants Use Dozens of Gestures to Ask for Apples and Scientists Say That’s No Accident

Elephants were found to gesture intentionally when they wanted humans to give them apples. This trait was thought to exist mainly in primates.

People Judge Sexual History by Timing Not Just by How Many Partners You’ve Had

People are more willing to date someone with a wild past if that phase is over.

A Radioactive Wasp Nest Was Just Found at an Old U.S. Nuclear Weapons Site and No One Knows What Happened

Wasp nest near nuclear waste tanks tested 10 times above safe radiation limits

Dinosaur Teeth Help Scientists Recreate the Air Dinosaurs Once Breathed

Dinosaurs inhaled air with four times more CO2 than today.

Coastal Flooding Is Much Worse Than Official Records Show — and No One’s Measuring It

There were big flaws in how we estimated floods in coastal communities.

Did Columbus Bring Syphilis to Europe? Ancient DNA Suggests So

A new study pinpoints the origin of the STD to South America.