Sunday, December 20, 2015 8:02:06 PM
Google’s Quantum Dream Machine
Physicist John Martinis could deliver one of the holy grails of computing to Google—a machine that dramatically speeds up today’s applications and makes new ones possible.
By Tom Simonite on December 18, 2015
John Martinis has been researching how quantum computers could work
for 30 years. Now he could be on the verge of finally making a useful one.
John Martinis used the arm of his reading glasses to indicate the spot where he intends to demonstrate an almost unimaginably powerful new form of computer in a few years. It is a cylindrical socket an inch and a half across, at the bottom of a torso-sized stack of plates, blocks, and wires of brass, copper, and gold. The day after I met with him this fall, he loaded the socket with an experimental superconducting chip etched with a microscopic Google logo and cooled the apparatus to a hundredth of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. To celebrate that first day of testing the machine, Martinis threw what he called “a little party” at a brewpub with colleagues from his newly outfitted Google lab in Santa Barbara, California.
That party was nothing compared with the celebration that will take place if Martinis and his group can actually create the wonder computer they seek. Because it would harness the strange properties of quantum physics that arise in extreme conditions like those on the ultracold chip, the new computer would let a Google coder run calculations in a coffee break that would take a supercomputer of today millions of years. The software that Google has developed on ordinary computers to drive cars or answer questions could become vastly more intelligent. And earlier-stage ideas bubbling up at Google and its parent company, such as robots that can serve as emergency responders or software that can converse at a human level, might become real.
The theoretical underpinnings of quantum computing are well established. And physicists can build the basic units, known as qubits, out of which a quantum computer would be made. They can even operate qubits together in small groups. But they have not made a fully working, practical quantum computer.
Martinis is a towering figure in the field:... http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544421/googles-quantum-dream-machine/
Physicist John Martinis could deliver one of the holy grails of computing to Google—a machine that dramatically speeds up today’s applications and makes new ones possible.
By Tom Simonite on December 18, 2015
John Martinis has been researching how quantum computers could work
for 30 years. Now he could be on the verge of finally making a useful one.
John Martinis used the arm of his reading glasses to indicate the spot where he intends to demonstrate an almost unimaginably powerful new form of computer in a few years. It is a cylindrical socket an inch and a half across, at the bottom of a torso-sized stack of plates, blocks, and wires of brass, copper, and gold. The day after I met with him this fall, he loaded the socket with an experimental superconducting chip etched with a microscopic Google logo and cooled the apparatus to a hundredth of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. To celebrate that first day of testing the machine, Martinis threw what he called “a little party” at a brewpub with colleagues from his newly outfitted Google lab in Santa Barbara, California.
That party was nothing compared with the celebration that will take place if Martinis and his group can actually create the wonder computer they seek. Because it would harness the strange properties of quantum physics that arise in extreme conditions like those on the ultracold chip, the new computer would let a Google coder run calculations in a coffee break that would take a supercomputer of today millions of years. The software that Google has developed on ordinary computers to drive cars or answer questions could become vastly more intelligent. And earlier-stage ideas bubbling up at Google and its parent company, such as robots that can serve as emergency responders or software that can converse at a human level, might become real.
The theoretical underpinnings of quantum computing are well established. And physicists can build the basic units, known as qubits, out of which a quantum computer would be made. They can even operate qubits together in small groups. But they have not made a fully working, practical quantum computer.
Martinis is a towering figure in the field:... http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544421/googles-quantum-dream-machine/
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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