Already this year: Google plans to create a quantum computer
By the end of this year, the Google team, led by a professor of physics at the University of California, John Martinis (John Martinis), plans to develop a quantum chip that can outperform existing computers in computing speed. As proof, the team is ready to hold a “speed competition” between its invention and one of the world's supercomputers.
/ Flickr / dano / cc
Google has already published a report on the use of the chip with 9 qubits aligned linearly. The last chip released by the Internet giant consists of only 6 qubits, but they are grouped into three. At the same time, as Martinis claims, the team’s goal is to create an array of 49 qubits for a successful experiment.
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Such a number of them will allow to achieve the so-called quantum superiority , when not a single classic computer can match the quantum power. John Martinis has led the Google research group, which has been working on creating super-powerful computer chips that use quantum physics to process data, since 2014.
At that time, the D-Wave computer already existed in the world, which was also acquired by Google. However, such a system cannot be considered a full-fledged quantum computer, in fact it is only a quantum annealing unit. Greg Tallant, head of the Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, says that the system solves problems based on the Ising model and can be used for a limited number of problems. In 2014, D-Wave had 512 qubits, which were not interconnected, and Martinis managed to connect 5 qubits at that time.
But not all scientists find the idea of ​​quantum superiority worthy of attention. For example, physicist Robert Schoelkopf from Yale University is convinced that in this context, the problem of error correction is much more important. The point is that qubits as basic units of quantum information are extremely susceptible to external influences, and this leads to errors in the work.
However, Google was engaged in solving this problem in 2015, and quite successfully. Scientists have developed a quantum error correction code that measures the quantum state of a qubit entangled with neighboring qubits. This allows you to keep its original state. At the same time, scientists have found that with an increase in the number of qubits, error correction will only get better.
The Google team is confident that they have every chance to conduct an experiment with quantum superiority this year. And although quantum computers in the future will have to have far more qubits than 49, this will be an important step towards the creation of a full-fledged quantum computing system.
Other materials from our blog:
/ Flickr / dano / cc
Google has already published a report on the use of the chip with 9 qubits aligned linearly. The last chip released by the Internet giant consists of only 6 qubits, but they are grouped into three. At the same time, as Martinis claims, the team’s goal is to create an array of 49 qubits for a successful experiment.
')
Such a number of them will allow to achieve the so-called quantum superiority , when not a single classic computer can match the quantum power. John Martinis has led the Google research group, which has been working on creating super-powerful computer chips that use quantum physics to process data, since 2014.
At that time, the D-Wave computer already existed in the world, which was also acquired by Google. However, such a system cannot be considered a full-fledged quantum computer, in fact it is only a quantum annealing unit. Greg Tallant, head of the Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, says that the system solves problems based on the Ising model and can be used for a limited number of problems. In 2014, D-Wave had 512 qubits, which were not interconnected, and Martinis managed to connect 5 qubits at that time.
But not all scientists find the idea of ​​quantum superiority worthy of attention. For example, physicist Robert Schoelkopf from Yale University is convinced that in this context, the problem of error correction is much more important. The point is that qubits as basic units of quantum information are extremely susceptible to external influences, and this leads to errors in the work.
However, Google was engaged in solving this problem in 2015, and quite successfully. Scientists have developed a quantum error correction code that measures the quantum state of a qubit entangled with neighboring qubits. This allows you to keep its original state. At the same time, scientists have found that with an increase in the number of qubits, error correction will only get better.
The Google team is confident that they have every chance to conduct an experiment with quantum superiority this year. And although quantum computers in the future will have to have far more qubits than 49, this will be an important step towards the creation of a full-fledged quantum computing system.
Other materials from our blog:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/327420/
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