Quantum computers could revolutionize the way we tackle problems that stump even the best classical computers.
Single atom transistor recently introduced has been seen as a tool that could lead the way to building a quantum computer. For general introduction how quantum computer work, read A tale of two qubits: how quantum computers work article.
D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer article tells that computing company D-Wave has announced that they’re selling a quantum computing system commercially, which they’re calling the D-Wave One. D-Wave system comes equipped with a 128-qubit processor that’s designed to perform discrete optimization operations. The processor uses quantum annealing to perform these operations.
D-Wave is advertisting a number of different applications for its quantum computing system, primarily in the field of artificial intelligence. According to the company, its system can handle virtually any AI application that can be translated to a Markov random field.
Learning to program the D-Wave One blog article tells that the processor in the D-Wave One – codenamed Rainier – is designed to perform a single mathematical operation called discrete optimization. It is a special purpose processor. When writing applications the D-Wave One is used only for the steps in your task that involve solving optimization problems. All the other parts of your code still run on your conventional systems of choice. Rainier solves optimization problems using quantum annealing (QA), which is a class of problem solving approaches that use quantum effects to help get better solutions, faster. Learning to program the D-Wave One is the first in a series of blog posts describing the algorithms we have run on D-Wave quantum computers, and how to use these to build interesting applications.
But is this the start of the quantum computers era? Maybe not. D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer article comments tell a story that this computer might not be the quantum computer you might be waiting for. It seem that the name “quantum computer” is a bit misleading for this product. There are serious controversies around the working and “quantumness” of the machine. D-Wave has been heavily criticized by some scientists in the quantum computing field. First sale for quantum computing article tells that uncertainty persists around how the impressive black monolith known as D-Wave One actually works. Computer scientists have long questioned whether D-Wave’s systems truly exploit quantum physics on their products.
Slashdot article D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer comments tell that this has the same central problem as before. D-Wave’s computers haven’t demonstrated that their commercial bits are entangled. There’s no way to really distinguish what they are doing from essentially classical simulated annealing. Recommended reading that is skeptical of D-Wave’s claims is much of what Scott Aaronson has wrote about them. See for example http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639, http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=198 although interestingly after he visited D-Wave’s labs in person his views changed slightly and became slightly more sympathetic to them http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954.
So it is hard to say if the “128 qubits” part is snake oil or for real. If the 128 “qubits” aren’t entangled at all, which means it is useless for any of the quantum algorithms that one generally thinks of. It seem that this device simply has 128 separate “qubits” that are queried individually, and is, essentially an augmented classical computer that gains a few minor advantages in some very specific algorithms (i.e. the quantum annealing algorithm) due to this qubit querying, but is otherwise indistinguishable from a really expensive classical computer for any other purpose. This has the same central problem as before: D-Wave’s computers haven’t demonstrated that their commercial bits are entangled.
Rather than constantly adding more qubits and issuing more hard-to-evaluate announcements, while leaving the scientific characterization of its devices in a state of limbo, why doesn’t D-Wave just focus all its efforts on demonstrating entanglement, or otherwise getting stronger evidence for a quantum role in the apparent speedup? There’s a reason why academic quantum computing groups focus on pushing down decoherence and demonstrating entanglement in 2, 3, or 4 qubits: because that way, at least you know that the qubits are qubits! Suppose D-Wave were marketing a classical, special-purpose, $10-million computer designed to perform simulated annealing, for 90-bit Ising spin glass problems with a certain fixed topology, somewhat better than an off-the-shelf computing cluster. Would there be even 5% of the public interest that there is now?
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Quantum computers are so sensitive to disturbance that a stray cosmic ray can ruin a good calculation. Repetition, compartmentalization and a few other qubit tricks may solve the problem, though.
Dialing Down a Quantum Compute Glitch by 100,000x A low-key solution to qubits’ cosmic ray problem
https://spectrum.ieee.org/quantum-computing-cosmic-rays?share_id=7357304&socialux=facebook&utm_campaign=RebelMouse&utm_content=IEEE+Spectrum&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
The kind of quantum computers that IBM, Google and Amazon are building suffer catastrophic errors roughly once every 10 seconds due to cosmic rays from outer space. Now a new study reveals a way to reduce this error rate by nearly a half-million-fold to less than once per month.
The quantum effects that quantum computers depend on are extraordinarily vulnerable to disruption from their surroundings. This fragility typically leads present-day state-of-the-art quantum computers to suffer roughly one error every 1,000 operations. However, many practical applications for quantum computing demand error rates lower by a billion times or more.
Quantum physicists often hope to compensate for these high error rates by spreading quantum information across many redundant qubits.
This would help quantum computers detect and correct errors, so that a cluster of many “physical qubits,” the error-ridden kinds that researchers have developed to date, can make up one useful “logical qubit.”
Google, IBM and others aim to develop such fault-tolerant quantum computers using superconducting circuits as qubits. This is because such hardware is potentially scalable to many thousands of physical qubits in the near future.
However, a 2021 study from Google scientists and their colleagues revealed these superconducting circuits are vulnerable to errors from cosmic rays from deep space.
Conventional quantum error correction codes usually deal with noise that disrupts a single or a few qubits at once. However, cosmic rays can disrupt all the qubits in a chip at once. “Cosmic ray events therefore overwhelm the limited capacity of conventional quantum error correction codes,” says study lead author Qian Xu, a quantum physicist at the University of Chicago.
A cosmic ray strike can essentially erase all the quantum information encoded on a quantum processor.
In addition, quantum computers based on superconducting circuits may experience such catastrophic failures every 10 seconds on average, which is especially detrimental to long quantum computing tasks that might take several hours. Moreover, cosmic rays can disrupt other kinds of quantum computing hardware as well, such as semiconductor spin qubits.
Now Xu and his colleagues have developed a strategy to suppress the rate of errors from cosmic rays to just one every 51 days. “Quantum computers, with sufficient protection, can be robust against very catastrophic events, such as cosmic ray events,” Xu says.
Multiple quantum computing data chips (left) are connected to an ancilla chip (right). If a cosmic ray event erases data in a data chip (lower left), the unimpacted data chips and the ancilla chip can correct the error.
The researchers divide a quantum computer into several data chips, each possessing multiple superconducting qubits. These data chips are connected to an “ancilla chip“ with extra superconducting qubits that monitor data chip performance.
All the chips run a conventional quantum error correction code in order to deal with regular errors. They also run a second quantum error correction code designed to protect against cosmic rays.
In the new study, the quantum computer’s data is distributed across multiple data chips. If a cosmic ray hits the quantum computer, this compartmentalization limits the damage from the impact.
After the cosmic ray strike, the ancilla chip can then work with the data chips not disrupted by the cosmic ray to correct the impacted data chips and restore all the quantum computer’s data. “The whole computer does not have to start over if some of the chips are damaged by the cosmic ray event,” Xu says.
This new strategy can also detect and correct any errors that cosmic rays may cause in the ancilla chip, all without damaging the quantum computer’s data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14347-ibm-n-kvanttiprosessori-kasvoi-433-kubitiin
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IBM:n kvanttiprosessori kasvoi 433 kubittiin
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14347-ibm-n-kvanttiprosessori-kasvoi-433-kubitiin
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/quantum-sensors-entanglement
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Notate Lets Programmers Define Quantum Circuits by Simply Drawing a Diagram
Designed to augment, rather than supplant, traditional textual programming, Notate can boost development speed.
https://www.hackster.io/news/notate-lets-programmers-define-quantum-circuits-by-simply-drawing-a-diagram-6eccc95556b2
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Stephen Witt / New Yorker:
A deep dive into the race to develop a quantum computer, which could help address climate change and food scarcity, break current encryption protocols, and more
The World-Changing Race to Develop the Quantum Computer
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/19/the-world-changing-race-to-develop-the-quantum-computer?currentPage=all
Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first?
The processor, named Sycamore, is a small, rectangular tile, studded with several dozen ports. Sycamore harnesses some of the weirdest properties of physics in order to perform mathematical operations that contravene all human intuition. Once it is connected, the entire unit is placed inside a cylindrical freezer and cooled for more than a day. The processor relies on superconductivity, meaning that, at ultracold temperatures, its resistance to electricity all but disappears. When the temperature surrounding the processor is colder than the deepest void of outer space, the computations can begin.
Classical computers speak in the language of bits, which take values of zero and one. Quantum computers, like the ones Google is building, use qubits, which can take a value of zero or one, and also a complex combination of zero and one at the same time. Qubits are thus exponentially more powerful than bits, able to perform calculations that normal bits can’t. But, because of this elemental change, everything must be redeveloped: the hardware, the software, the programming languages, and even programmers’ approach to problems.
On the day I visited, a technician—whom Google calls a “quantum mechanic”—was working on the computer with an array of small machine tools. Each qubit is controlled by a dedicated wire, which the technician, seated on a stool, attached by hand.
The quantum computer before us was the culmination of years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. It also barely functioned. Today’s quantum computers are “noisy,” meaning that they fail at almost everything they attempt. Nevertheless, the race to build them has attracted as dense a concentration of genius as any scientific problem on the planet. Intel, I.B.M., Microsoft, and Amazon are also building quantum computers. So is the Chinese government. The winner of the race will produce the successor to the silicon microchip, the device that enabled the information revolution.
A full-scale quantum computer could crack our current encryption protocols, essentially breaking the Internet. Most online communications, including financial transactions and popular text-messaging platforms, are protected by cryptographic keys that would take a conventional computer millions of years to decipher. A working quantum computer could presumably crack one in less than a day. That is only the beginning. A quantum computer could open new frontiers in mathematics, revolutionizing our idea of what it means to “compute.” Its processing power could spur the development of new industrial chemicals, addressing the problems of climate change and food scarcity. And it could reconcile the elegant theories of Albert Einstein with the unruly microverse of particle physics, enabling discoveries about space and time. “The impact of quantum computing is going to be more profound than any technology to date,” Jeremy O’Brien, the C.E.O. of the startup PsiQuantum, said recently. First, though, the engineers have to get it to work.
Shor’s most famous algorithm proposes using qubits to “factor” very large numbers into smaller components. I asked him to explain how it works, and he erased the hexagons from the chalkboard. The key to factoring, Shor said, is identifying prime numbers, which are whole numbers divisible only by one and by themselves. (Five is prime. Six, which is divisible by two and by three, is not.) There are twenty-five prime numbers between one and a hundred, but as you count higher they become increasingly rare. Shor, drawing a series of compact formulas on the chalkboard, explained that certain sequences of numbers repeat periodically along the number line. The distances between these repetitions grow exponentially, however, making them difficult to calculate with a conventional computer.
Shor then turned to me. “O.K., here is the heart of my discovery,” he said. “Do you know what a diffraction grating is?” I confessed that I did not, and Shor’s eyes grew wide with concern. He began drawing a simple sketch of a light beam hitting a filter and then diffracting into the colors of the rainbow, which he illustrated with colored chalk. “Each color of light has a wavelength,” Shor said. “We’re doing something similar. This thing is really a computational diffraction grating, so we’re sorting out the different periods.”
Each color on the chalkboard represented a different grouping of numbers. A classical computer, looking at these groupings, would have to analyze them one at a time. A quantum computer could process the whole rainbow at once.
The challenge is to realize Shor’s theoretical work with physical hardware. In 2001, experimental physicists at I.B.M. tried to implement the algorithm by firing electromagnetic pulses at molecules suspended in liquid. “I think that machine cost about half a million dollars,” Shor said, “and it informed us that fifteen equals five times three.” Classical computing’s bits are relatively easy to build—think of a light switch, which can be turned either “on” or “off.” Quantum computing’s qubits require something like a dial, or, more accurately, several dials, each of which must be tuned to a specific amplitude. Implementing such precise controls at the subatomic scale remains a fiendish problem.
Still, in anticipation of the day that security experts call Y2Q , the protocols that safeguard text messaging, e-mail, medical records, and financial transactions must be torn out and replaced. Earlier this year, the Biden Administration announced that it was moving toward new, quantum-proof encryption standards that offer protection from Shor’s algorithm. Implementing them is expected to take more than a decade and cost tens of billions of dollars, creating a bonanza for cybersecurity experts. “The difference between this and Y2K is we knew the actual date when Y2K would occur,” the cryptographer Bruce Schneier told me.
In anticipation of Y2Q , spy agencies are warehousing encrypted Internet traffic, hoping to read it in the near future. “We are seeing our adversaries do this—copying down our encrypted data and just holding on to it,” Dustin Moody, the mathematician in charge of U.S. post-quantum encryption standards, said. “It’s definitely a real threat.”
Within a decade or two, most communications from this era will likely be exposed. The Biden Administration’s deadline for the cryptography upgrade is 2035. A quantum computer capable of running a simple version of Shor’s algorithm could appear as early as 2029.
At the root of quantum-computing research is a scientific concept known as “quantum entanglement.” Entanglement is to computing what nuclear fission was to explosives: a strange property of the subatomic world that could be harnessed to create technology of unprecedented power. If entanglement could be enacted at the scale of everyday objects, it would seem like a magic trick.
If you find entanglement confusing, you are not alone: it took the scientific community the better part of a century to begin to understand its effects. Like so many concepts in physics, entanglement was first described in one of Einstein’s Gedankenexperiments.
At Google’s lab in Santa Barbara, the objective is to entangle many qubits at once.
One example is Grover’s algorithm, developed by Lov Grover, Shor’s colleague at Bell Labs in the nineties. “Grover’s algorithm is about unstructured search, which is a nice example for Google,” Neven, the founder of the lab, said. “I like to think about it as a huge closet with a million drawers.” One of the drawers contains a tennis ball. A human rooting around in the closet will, on average, find the ball after opening half a million drawers. “As amazing as this may sound, Grover’s algorithm could do it in just one thousand steps,” Neven said. “I think the whole magic of quantum mechanics can essentially be seen here.”
Google’s published scientific results in quantum computing have at times drawn scrutiny from other researchers.
The main problem with Google’s entangled qubits is that they are not “fault-tolerant.” The Sycamore processor will, on average, make an error every thousand steps. But a typical experiment requires far more than a thousand steps, so, to obtain meaningful results, researchers must run the same program tens of thousands of times, then use signal-processing techniques to refine a small amount of valuable information from a mountain of data. The situation might be improved if programmers could inspect the state of the qubits while the processor is running, but measuring a superpositioned qubit forces it to assume a specific value, causing the calculation to deteriorate. Such “measurements” need not be made by a conscious observer; any number of interactions with the environment will result in the same collapse. “Getting quiet, cold, dark places for qubits to live is a fundamental part of getting quantum computing to scale,” Giustina said. Google’s processors sometimes fail when they encounter radiation from outside our solar system.
In the early days of quantum computing, researchers worried that the measurement problem was intractable, but in 1995 Peter Shor showed that entanglement could be used to correct errors, too, ameliorating the high fault rate of the hardware.
Quantum computing is a Mt. Baldy problem. “I made a prediction, in 1998, that the computers would be realized in thirty years,” Kitaev said. “I’m not sure we’ll make it.” Kitaev’s error-correction scheme is one of the most promising approaches to building a functional quantum computer, and, in 2012, he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize, the world’s most lucrative science award, for his work. Later, Google hired him as a consultant. So far, no one has managed to implement his idea.
Fault-tolerant quantum computers should be able to simulate the molecular behavior of industrial chemicals with unprecedented precision, guiding scientists to faster results. In 2019, researchers predicted that, with just a thousand fault-tolerant qubits, a method for producing ammonia for agricultural use, called the Haber-Bosch process, could be accurately modelled for the first time. An improvement to this process would lead to a substantial decrease in carbon-dioxide emissions. Lithium, the primary component of batteries for electric cars, is a simple element with an atomic number of three. A fault-tolerant quantum computer, even a primitive one, might show how to expand its capacity to store energy, increasing vehicle range. Quantum computers could be used to develop biodegradable plastics, or carbon-free aviation fuel. Another use, suggested by the consulting company McKinsey, was “simulating surfactants to develop a better carpet cleaner.” “We have good reason to believe that a quantum computer would be able to efficiently simulate any process that occurs in nature,” Preskill wrote, a few years ago.
The world we live in is the macroscopic scale. It is the world of ordinary kinetics: billiard balls and rocket ships. The world of subatomic particles is the quantum scale. It is the world of strange effects: interference and uncertainty and entanglement.
Quantum physics wins the Nobel. Quantum chemistry will write the checks.
The potential windfall from licensing royalties has excited investors. In addition to the tech giants, a raft of startups are trying to build quantum computers. The Quantum Insider, an industry trade publication, has tallied more than six hundred companies in the sector, and another estimate suggests that thirty billion dollars has been invested in developing quantum technology worldwide. Many of these businesses are speculative.
IonQ , based in College Park, Maryland, went public last year, despite having almost no sales. Researchers there compute with qubits obtained using the “trapped ion” approach, arranging atoms of the rare-earth element ytterbium into a tidy row, then manipulating them with a laser. Jungsang Kim, IonQ’s C.T.O., told me that his ion traps maintain entanglement better than Google’s processors, but he admitted that, as more qubits are added, the laser system gets more complicated. “Improving the controller, that’s kind of our sticking point,” he said.
At PsiQuantum, in Palo Alto, engineers are making qubits from photons, the weightless particles of light. “The advantage of this approach is that we use preëxisting silicon-fabrication technology,” Pete Shadbolt, the company’s chief scientific officer, said. “Also, we can operate at somewhat higher temperatures.” PsiQuantum has raised half a billion dollars. There are other, weirder approaches. Microsoft, building on Kitaev’s work, is attempting to construct a “topological” qubit, which requires synthesizing an elusive particle in order to work. Intel is trying the “silicon spin” approach, which embeds qubits in semiconductors. The competition has led to bidding wars for talent. “If you have an advanced degree in quantum physics, you can go out into the job market and get five offers in three weeks,” Kim said.
Even the most optimistic analysts believe that quantum computing will not earn meaningful profits in the next five years, and pessimists caution that it could take more than a decade. It seems likely that a lot of expensive equipment will be developed with little durable purpose. “You walk down the hall at the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, and you see a mercury delay line,” Shadbolt said, referring to an obsolete contraption from the nineteen-forties that stored information using sound waves. “I love thinking about the guys who built that.”
It is difficult, even for insiders, to determine which approach is currently in the lead. “ ‘Pivot’ is the Silicon Valley word for a near-death experience,” Neven said. “But if one day we see that superconducting qubits are outcompeted by some other technology, like photonics, I would pivot in a heartbeat.” Neven actually seemed relieved by the competition.
At the campuses of the University of Science and Technology of China, four competing quantum-computing technologies are being developed in parallel
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU-rahaa VTT:n vetämään kvanttikonehankkeeseen
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14411-eu-rahaa-vtt-n-vetaemaeaen-kvanttikonehankkeeseen
Euroopan unioni rahoittaa 19 miljoonalla eurolla hanketta, jonka tavoitteena on parantaa Euroopan nykyistä mikro-, nano- ja kvanttiteknologian infrastruktuuria. Näin pyritään vastaamaan yritysten kasvavaan tarpeeseen kvanttiteknologian pilottituotannolle. Hanketta johtaa VTT ja siinä on mukana 24 organisaatiota yhdeksästä Euroopan maasta.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You can buy a portable quantum computer for under $9K
https://www.pcgamer.com/you-can-buy-a-portable-quantum-computer-for-under-dollar9k/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackersonlineclub.com/top-10-digital-forensics-software/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14411-eu-rahaa-vtt-n-vetaemaeaen-kvanttikonehankkeeseen
Tomi Engdahl says:
What are companies doing with D-Wave’s quantum hardware?
D-Wave’s computers are especially good at solving optimization problems.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/companies-are-relying-on-quantum-annealers-for-useful-computations/
While many companies are now offering access to general-purpose quantum computers, they’re not currently being used to solve any real-world problems, as they’re held back by issues with qubit count and quality. Most of their users are either running research projects or simply gaining experience with programming on the systems in the expectation that a future computer will be useful.
There are quantum systems based on superconducting hardware that are being used commercially; it’s just that they’re not general-purpose computers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
D-Wave offers what’s called a quantum annealer. The hardware is a large collection of linked superconducting devices that use quantum effects to reach energetic ground states for the system. When properly configured, this end state represents the solution to a mathematical problem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2023 Will See Renewed Focus on Quantum Computing https://www.darkreading.com/tech-trends/2023-will-see-more-focus-on-quantum-computing
2022 was a big year for quantum computing. Over the summer, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) unveiled four quantum computing algorithms that eventually will be turned into a final quantum computing standard, and governments around the world boosted investments in quantum computing. 2023 may be the year when quantum finally steps into the limelight, with organizations preparing to begin the process of implementing quantum computing technologies into existing systems. It will also be the year to start paying attention to quantum computing-based attacks
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https://www.techopedia.com/is-quantum-computing-for-real/2/34913
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Scaling Up Quantum Computing by Interconnecting Quantum Processors
January 23, 2023 Anne-Françoise Pelé
https://www.eetimes.eu/scaling-up-quantum-computing-by-interconnecting-quantum-processors/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=link&utm_medium=EETimesEuropeWeekly-20230126
French startup Welinq has raised €5 million to deliver industry-grade neutral-atom quantum memories for deployment in quantum computing and quantum communication infrastructures
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Pasqal Raises €100M to Build 1,000-Qubit Quantum Computer by 2024
January 24, 2023 Anne-Françoise Pelé
Pasqal aims to build a 1,000-qubit quantum computer in the near term and fault-tolerant architectures in the long term.
https://www.eetimes.eu/pasqal-raises-e100m-to-build-1000-qubit-quantum-computer-by-2024/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=link&utm_medium=EETimesEuropeWeekly-20230126
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Quantum Computers Could Solve Countless Problems—And Create a Lot of New Ones
https://time.com/6249784/quantum-computing-revolution/
One of the secrets to building the world’s most powerful computer is probably perched by your bathroom sink.
At IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York State’s Westchester County, scientists always keep a box of dental floss—Reach is the preferred brand—close by in case they need to tinker with their oil-drum-size quantum computers, the latest of which can complete certain tasks millions of times as fast as your laptop.
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Pasqal raises €100M to build a neutral atom-based quantum computer
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/23/pasqal-raises-100m-to-build-a-neutral-atom-based-quantum-computer/
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New Algorithm Closes Quantum Supremacy Window
By
BEN BRUBAKER
January 9, 2023
https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-closes-quantum-supremacy-window-20230109/
Random circuit sampling, a popular technique for showing the power of quantum computers, doesn’t scale up if errors go unchecked.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-10-quantum-computing-companies-to-watch-out-for-in-2023/
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RSA’s demise from quantum attacks is very much exaggerated, expert says | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/fear-not-rsa-encryption-wont-fall-to-quantum-computing-anytime-soon/
Expert says the focus on quantum attacks may distract us from more immediate threats.
Scientists and cryptographers have known for two decades that a factorization method known as Shor’s algorithm makes it theoretically possible for a quantum computer with sufficient resources to break RSA. That’s because the secret prime numbers that underpin the security of an RSA key are easy to calculate using Shor’s algorithm. Computing the same primes using classical computing takes billions of years.
The only thing holding back this doomsday scenario is the massive amount of computing resources required for Shor’s algorithm to break RSA keys of sufficient size. The current estimate is that breaking a 1,024-bit or 2,048-bit RSA key requires a quantum computer with vast resources. Specifically, those resources are about 20 million qubits and about eight hours of them running in superposition.
The paper, published three weeks ago by a team of researchers in China, reported finding a factorization method that could break a 2,048-bit RSA key using a quantum system with just 372 qubits when it operated using thousands of operation steps. The finding, if true, would have meant that the fall of RSA encryption to quantum computing could come much sooner than most people believed.
RSA’s demise is greatly exaggerated
At the Enigma 2023 Conference in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday, computer scientist and security and privacy expert Simson Garfinkel assured researchers that the demise of RSA was greatly exaggerated. For the time being, he said, quantum computing has few, if any, practical applications.
“In the near term, quantum computers are good for one thing, and that is getting papers published in prestigious journals,” Garfinkel, co-author with Chris Hoofnagle of the 2021 book Law and Policy for the Quantum Age, told the audience. “The second thing they are reasonably good at, but we don’t know for how much longer, is they’re reasonably good at getting funding.”
Even when quantum computing becomes advanced enough to provide useful applications, the applications are likely for simulating physics and chemistry, and performing computer optimizations that don’t work well with classical computing. Garfinkel said that the dearth of useful applications in the foreseeable future might bring on a “quantum winter,” similar to the multiple rounds of artificial intelligence winters before AI finally took off.
Within short order, a host of researchers pointed out fatal flaws in Schnorr’s algorithm that have all but debunked it. Specifically, critics said there was no evidence supporting the authors’ claims of Schnorr’s algorithm achieving polynomial time, as opposed to the exponential time achieved with classical algorithms.
The research paper from three weeks ago seemed to take Shor’s algorithm at face value. Even when it’s supposedly enhanced using QAOA—something there’s currently no support for—it’s questionable whether it provides any performance boost.
“All told, this is one of the most actively misleading quantum computing papers I’ve seen in 25 years, and I’ve seen … many,” Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and director of its Quantum Information Center, wrote. “Having said that, this actually isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the strange idea that the exponential quantum speedup for factoring integers, which we know about from Shor’s algorithm, should somehow ‘rub off’ onto quantum optimization heuristics that embody none of the actual insights of Shor’s algorithm, as if by sympathetic magic.”
In geological time, yes; in our lifetime, no
On Tuesday, Japanese technology company Fujitsu published a press release that provided further reassurance that the cryptocalypse isn’t nigh. Fujitsu researchers, the press release claimed, found that cracking an RSA key would require a fault-tolerant quantum computer with a scale of roughly 10,000 qubits and 2.23 trillion quantum gates, and even then, the computation would require about 104 days.
“For example, when [the Fujitsu researchers] say 10,000 qubits in the press release, do they mean logical or physical qubits?” Samuel Jaques, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, wrote in an email. “In my view, the best estimate for quantum factoring is still [Craig] Gidney and [Martin] Ekerå from 2020, who estimate that factoring RSA-2048 would need 20 million physical qubits and 8 hours. If Fujitsu’s result drops the physical qubit count from 20 million to 10,000, that’s a huge breakthrough; if instead they need 10,000 logical qubits, then that’s much more than Gidney and Ekerå so I would need to check carefully to see why.”
Even when the day comes that there’s a quantum computer with the power envisioned by Gidney and Ekerå, the notion that RSA will fall in one stroke is misleading. That’s because it would take this 20 million-qubit quantum system eight hours in constant superposition to crack a single encryption key. That would certainly be catastrophic since someone might be able to use the capability to cryptographically sign malicious updates with a Microsoft or Apple key and distribute them to millions of people.
But even then, the scenario that nation-states are storing all encrypted communications in a database and will decrypt them all in bulk once a quantum computer becomes available is unrealistic, given the number of keys and the resources required to crack them all.
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Kiina teki kaikessa hiljaisuudessa kvanttiloikan – tietojärjestelmän ytimessä 24 kubitin kone https://www.is.fi/digitoday/art-2000009363081.html
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Another step towards practical quantum computers
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-quantum.html
Researchers from the University of Sussex and Universal Quantum have demonstrated for the first time that quantum bits (qubits) can directly transfer between quantum computer microchips and demonstrated this with record-breaking speed and accuracy. This breakthrough resolves a major challenge in building quantum computers large and powerful enough to tackle complex problems that are of critical importance to society.
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Underdog technologies gain ground in quantum-computing race
Individual atoms trapped by optical ‘tweezers’ are emerging as a promising computational platform.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00278-9
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/a-guide-to-not-understanding-quantum-mechanics/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientists create modem for future quantum internet
This mirrored cabinet could allow quantum computers to communicate.
https://www.freethink.com/technology/quantum-internet-modem#Echobox=1676903817
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless technique enables quantum computer to send and receive data without generating too much error-causing heat
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-wireless-technique-enables-quantum-generating.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-google-hails-key-milestone-quantum.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel haastaa IBM:n kvanttikoneiden ohjelmoinnissa
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14671-intel-haastaa-ibm-n-kvanttikoneiden-ohjelmoinnissa
Kvanttitietokoneiden suorituskyvyn kehityksessä edetään nyt nopeasti. Pelkkä kubittien määrän lisääminen ei kuitenkaan vielä riitä, vaan kvanttioperaatioiden ohjaaminen on vähintään yhtä tärkeää. Intel sanoo nyt ottaneensa tässä tärkeän askeleen eteenpäin.
Intel on esitellyt ensimmäisen virallisen version kvanttikoneiden kehitysympäristöstään. Alusta on nimeltään Intel Quantum SDK 1.0. Beetaversio esiteltiin syyskuussa 2022, mutta nyt alusta on Intelin mukaan valmis asiakkaiden käsiin.
Kyse on Intelin mukaan kvanttitietokoneen täydellisestä simulaattorista, jolla voidaan ohjata myös Intelin kvanttikoneita. Tämä tarkoittaa sekä Horse Ridge II -ohjainprosessoria että myöhemmin tänä vuonna markkinoille tulevaa Intelin kvanttiprosessoria.
Työkaluilla kehittäjät voivat ohjelmoida kvanttialgoritmeja simuloitavaksi. Ohjelmointirajapinta on kirjoitettu C++:lla ja koodin käännöksessä käytetään alhaisen abstraktiotason virtuaalikonepohjaisia käännintyökaluja.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/quantum-computing.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-peacoq-detector-could-transform-how-quantum-computers-exchange-huge-quantities-of-data/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Two Oddball Ideas for a Megaqubit Quantum Computer How terahertz waves and quantum wells could interconnect many, many qubits
https://spectrum.ieee.org/qubit-connectivity
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eurooppa suunnittelee jo 1000 kubitin kvanttitietokonetta
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2023/03/13/eurooppa-suunnittelee-jo-1000-kubitin-kvanttitietokonetta/
Yhteiseurooppalaisen OpenSuperQPlus-jatkohankkeen tavoitteena on kehittää 1000 kubitin kvanttitietokone. Mukana on 28 toimijan kymmenestä eri maasta. Suomesta mukana ovat Aalto, Bluefors, CSC, IQM ja VTT.
Euroopan kvanttiteknologian lippulaivaohjelma jatkaa alkuperäisen OpenSuperQ-hankkeessa tehtyä työtä. Ensimmäinen vaihe, OpenSuperQPlus 100, on käynnistymässä. Siinä tieteellisen laskennan CSC on mukana kehittämässä pilviyhteyksiä ja suomalaisen IQM:n kanssa Elmer-ohjelmiston suorituskykyä,
Kvanttikoneen rakentamishankkeen tavoitteena on 3,5 vuoden kuluessa kehittää ensin kvanttialueen laitteistojen ja ohjelmistojen arviointijärjestelmiä sekä 100 kubitin tietokone. Ja toiseksi samalla tutkia tärkeimpiä 1 000 kubitin kvanttitietokoneen edellyttämiä komponentteja ja teknologisia linjauksia.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aalto-yliopiston tutkijat ovat onnistuneet ensimmäistä kertaa osoittamaan energian katoamisen atomejakin pienemmällä tasolla eli kvanttiturbulenssissa. Sitä tutkittiin yliopiston Kylmälaboratoriossa sijaitsevassa ainutlaatuisessa pyörivässä superpakastimessa eli kryostaatissa.
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2023/03/14/superpakastimella-kvanttiturbulenssin-jaljille/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A scalable and programmable quantum phononic processor based on trapped ions
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-scalable-programmable-quantum-phononic-processor.html
Researchers at Tsinghua University recently developed a new programmable quantum phononic processor with trapped ions. This processor, introduced in a paper in Nature Physics, could be easier to scale up in size than other previously proposed photonic quantum processors, which could ultimately enable better performances on complex problems.
“Originally, we were interested in the proposal of Scott Aaronson and others about Boson sampling, which might show the quantum advantages of simple linear optics and photons,” Kihwan Kim, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “We were wondering if it is possible to realize it with the phonons in a trapped ion system.”
The use of phonons (i.e., sound waves or elementary vibrations) to create quantum computing systems was theoretically explored for some time. In recent years, however, physicists created trapped-ion systems created the technology necessary to use phonons as a quantum information processing resource, rather than mere mediators for entangling qubits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News Analysis: UK Commits $3 Billion to Support National Quantum Strategy
https://www.securityweek.com/news-analysis-uk-commits-3-billion-to-support-national-quantum-strategy/
SecurityWeek spoke to VC firm Quantum Exponential about the UK National Quantum Strategy and investments in quantum computing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/google-parent-company-alphabet-makes-breakthrough-in-quantum-computing/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14843-kvanttikalvo-mahdollistaa-ultranopeat-tietokoneet
Tomi Engdahl says:
Generating Entangled Qubits And Qudits With Fully On-Chip Photonic Quantum Source
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/23/generating-entangled-qubits-and-qudits-with-fully-on-chip-photonic-quantum-source/
As the world of computing and communication draws ever closer to a quantum future, researchers are faced with many of the similar challenges encountered with classical computing and the associated semiconductor hurdles. For the use of entangled photon pairs, for example, it was already possible to perform the entanglement using miniaturized photonic structures, but these still required a bulky external laser source. In a recently demonstrated first, a team of researchers have created a fully on-chip integrated laser source with photonic circuitry that can perform all of these tasks without external modules.
Entangled Photons Produced Entirely On-Chip
Quantum photonic technology reduced to the size of a coin
https://spectrum.ieee.org/quantum-entanglement
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quantum effects of D-Wave’s hardware boost its performance
A clear performance edge, though the relevance to practical problems remains unclear.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/04/quantum-effects-of-d-waves-hardware-boosts-its-performance/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Embracing variations: Physicists first to analyze noise in Lambda-type quantum memory
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-embracing-variations-physicists-noise-lambda-type.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quantum Breakthrough: New Method Protects Information From Decoherence and Leaks
https://scitechdaily.com/quantum-breakthrough-new-method-protects-information-from-decoherence-and-leaks/
A novel approach for predicting the behavior of quantum systems provides an important tool for real-world applications of quantum technology.
Scientists have discovered a method for predicting the behavior of many-body quantum systems coupled to their environment. This advancement is essential for safeguarding quantum data in quantum devices, paving the way for practical applications of quantum technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quantum Decryption Brought Closer by Topological Qubits
https://www.securityweek.com/quantum-decryption-brought-closer-by-topological-qubits/
Quantinuum claims the most powerful quantum computer currently available –through cloud-based access from Quantinuum, and available through Azure Quantum in June 2023.
Quantinuum has demonstrated the controlled creation and manipulation of non-Abelian anyons – or, put more simply, brought the arrival of large-scale, error resistant quantum computers much closer.
Quantinuum
The processing power of quantum computers is derived from the ability of qubits (quantum bits) to offer multiple states, rather than the simple binary offering available in classical computers. The problem is that qubits are not stable and are highly subject to external disturbance from noise and heat. The most common solution to this problem is to use additional qubits to provide error correction to the operational qubits – but the result is that a general purpose operational quantum computer will require millions of qubits working together.
There is an alternative approach. Rather than use additional fragile ‘traditional’ qubits for error correction, create more stable qubits that require less error correction. This is the purpose of the topological qubit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM aikoo rakentaa sadantuhannen kubitin kvanttikoneen
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14997-ibm-aikoo-rakentaa-sadantuhannen-kubitin-kvanttikoneen
IBM suunnittelee rakentavansa sadantuhannen kubitin kvanttitietokoneen seuraavan 10 vuoden kuluessa. Hankkeessa tehdään yhteistyötä Tokion ja Chicagon yliopistojen kanssa.
Tavoite on kehittää järjestelmiä, joilla voitaisiin ratkaista sellaisia ongelmia, mihin ei pystytä löytämään ratkaisuja kaikkein tehokkaimmillakaan supertietokoneilla. Jo viime vuonna IBM osoitti Quantum Summit -tapahtumassaan, että kvanttikoneet on mahdollista skaalata tuhansiin kubitteihin.
Satatuhatta kubittia on kuitenkin hieman eri luokan kehitysprojekti. IBM:n mukaan on neljä avainaluetta, jotka vaativat lisäkehitystä 100 000 kubitin supertietokoneen toteuttamiseksi: kvanttiviestintä, middleware-väliohjelmisto kvantille, kvanttialgoritmit ja virheenkorjaus, jotta voidaan käyttää useita kvanttiprosessoreita ja kvanttiviestintää. Lisäksi tulevat vielä tarvittavat komponentit ja niiden edellyttämä toimitusketju.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM wants to build a 100, 000-qubit quantum computer https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073606/ibm-wants-to-build-a-100000-qubit-quantum-computer/
Late last year, IBM took the record for the largest quantum computing system with a. processor that contained 433 quantum bits, or qubits, the fundamental building blocks of. quantum information processing.
Now, the company has set its sights on a much bigger. target: a 100, 000-qubit machine that it aims to build within 10 years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael Brooks / MIT Technology Review:
An interview with IBM VP of Quantum Computing Jay Gambetta on the company’s plan to build a 100,000-qubit computer within 10 years, finding scientists, and more — The company wants to make large-scale quantum computers a reality within just 10 years. — Late last year, IBM took the record …
Computing
IBM wants to build a 100,000-qubit quantum computer
The company wants to make large-scale quantum computers a reality within just 10 years.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073606/ibm-wants-to-build-a-100000-qubit-quantum-computer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/15047-suomalaisyritykset-voivat-ostaa-kvanttilaskentaa-palveluna
Iso-Britanniassa toimiva kvanttitietokoneiden kehittäjä OQC asentaa laitteistonsa Equinixin datakeskukseen, mikä mahdollistaa suoran pääsyn OQC:n kvanttitietokoneeseen Equinix Fabric -palvelun avulla. – Suomalaiset asiakkaamme voivat jatkossa suorittaa monimutkaisia algoritmeja ja testata erilaisia käyttötapauksia etänä, ilman suoraa pääsyä itse rautaan, kertoo Equinix Suomen toimitusjohtaja Sami Holopainen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SDK for quantum software
Australian firm Quantum Brilliance has announced the full release of its Qristal SDK. Quantum Brilliance develops miniaturized, room-temperature and portable quantum computing products. Use-cases include classical-quantum hybrid applications in data centers, massively parallel clusters for computational chemistry and embedded accelerators for edge computing applications such as robotics, autonomous vehicles, and satellites. But quantum computers require new software – hence the SDK.
https://quantumbrilliance.com/quantum-brilliance-qristal
Tomi Engdahl says:
The new Iranian quantum computer is actually a beginner FPGA development board.
Iran Unveils ‘Quantum’ Device That Anyone Can Buy for $589 on Amazon
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxx4g/iran-unveils-quantum-device-that-anyone-can-buy-for-dollar589-on-amazon?fbclid=IwAR0DSlODOn4xo6Gxk81secmoAVSM-VH5reFcLDOO6bFNy1MWrMesObeg1rU
What Iran’s military called “the first product of the quantum processing algorithm” of the Naval university appears to be a stock development board.
Last week, Iran’s military unveiled what it called “the first product of the quantum processing algorithm” of the Imam Khomeini Naval University of Nowshahr. During a ceremony at the university, the Islamic Republic’s military revealed a bit of electronics sealed under glass. It appeared to be a common development board, available widely online for around $600.
According to multiple state-linked news agencies in Iran, the computer will help Iran detect disturbances on the surface of water using algorithms. Iranian Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari showed off the board during the ceremony and spoke of Iran’s recent breakthroughs in the world of quantum technology.
The touted quantum device appears to be a development board manufactured by a company called Diligent. The brand “ZedBoard” appears clearly in pictures. According to the company’s website, the ZedBoard has everything the beginning developer needs to get started working in Android, Linux, and Windows. It does not appear to come with any of the advanced qubits that make up a quantum computer, and suggested uses include “video processing, reconfigurable computing, motor control, software acceleration,” among others.
Quantum devices used for locating ships and navigating at sea are real.
The U.K. Navy recently tested one such device, which uses ultracold atoms to act as a kind of accelerometer, at sea. It looks nothing like the device unveiled by Iran.
It’s impossible to know if Iran has figured out how to use off-the-shelf dev boards to make quantum algorithms, but it’s not likely.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An architecture for quantum computers based on parity is attracting money from government and industry.
Rewriting the quantum-computer blueprint
An architecture for quantum computers based on parity is attracting money from government and industry.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01660-3?utm_medium=paid_social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=null&utm_term=null&utm_campaign=MLSR_AWARD_AWA1_GL_PCFU_00POL_SPIN-523&fbclid=IwAR39thW3O3shrNb9yI4qqSL-TluBrULkO4f6X_jgvmOZ-Jw3ZKih4_daCQ4_aem_th_Af1UOC8urI5A4Z6TF1vlBGqLI30KE-uHz9Loyve3bjqChOJoEbEjOgY_izowfGiwo2gm9WLRpepqDK2oQH2SiyyJ
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Intel announces its first quantum processor, Tunnel Falls, a 12-qubit chip using electrons for storing data, available to select academic and research partners
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/intel-enters-the-quantum-computing-horse-race-with-12-qubit-chip/