Quantum Computers 3

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A quantum computer, if built, will be to an ordinary computer

as a hydrogen bomb is to gunpowder, at least for some types of

computations. Today no quantum computer exists, beyond

laboratory prototypes capable of solving only tiny problems, and

many practical problems remain to be solved.

Yet the theory of quantum computing has advanced

significantly in the past decade, and is becoming a significant

discipline in itself. This explains the concepts and basic

mathematics behind quantum computers and some of the

promising approaches for building them.


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The massive amount of processing power generated by

computer manufacturers has not yet been able to quench our

thirst for speed and computing capacity

In 1947, American computer engineer Howard Aiken said that

just six electronic digital computers would satisfy the computing

needs of the United States. Others have made similar errant

predictions about the amount of computing power that would

support our growing technological needs.

Of course, Aiken didn't count on the large amounts of data

generated by scientific research, the proliferation of personal

computers or the emergence of the Internet, which have only

fueled our need for more, more and more computing power.


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Will we ever have the amount of computing power we need or

want? If, as Moore's Law states, the number of transistors on a micro

processor continues to double every 18 months, the year 2020 or 2030will find the circuits on a microprocessor measured on a scale.

And the logical next step will be to create quantum computers,

which will harness the power of atoms and molecules to performmemory and processing tasks. Quantum computers have the potential

to perform certain calculations significantly faster than any silicon-

based computer.

Scientists have already built basic quantum computers that can

perform certain calculations; but a practical quantum computer is still

years away. In this article, you'll learn what a quantum computer is

and just what it'll be used for in the next era of computing


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You don't have to go back too far to find the origins of quantum

computing.While computers have been around for the majority of

the 20th century, quantum computing was first theorized less than30 years ago, by a physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory.

In 1982 - Feynman proposed the idea of

creating machines based on the laws of quantum

mechanics instead of the laws of classical physics.

Paul Benioff is credited with first applying

quantum theory to computers in 1981. Benioff

theorized about creating a quantum Turing

machine. Most digital computers, like the one you

are using to read this article, are based on the

Turing Theory


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The Turing machine, developed by Alan Turing in the 1930s, is a

theoretical device that consists of tape of unlimited length that is

divided into little squares. Each square can either hold a symbol (1or 0) or be left blank.

A read-write device reads these symbols and blanks, which

gives the machine its instructions to perform a certain program

Well, in a quantum Turing machine, the difference is that the tapeexists in a quantum state, as does the read-write head. This means that

the symbols on the tape can be either 0 or 1 or a superposition of 0 and

1; in other words the symbols are both 0 and 1 (and all points in

between) at the same time.

1985 - David Deutsch developed the quantum Turing

machine, showing that quantum circuits are universal


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Qubits represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their

respective control devices that are working together to act as

computer memory and a processor. Because a quantum computer

can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has thepotential to be millions of times more powerful than today's

most powerful supercomputers.

Quantum computers aren't limited to two states; they encode

information as quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist insuperposition.


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A quantum Turing machine

can perform many calculations

at once

This superposition of

qubits is what gives quantum

computers their inherent

parallelism. According tophysicist David Deutsch, this

parallelism allows a quantum

computer to work on a

million computations at once,while your desktop PC works

on one.


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A 30-qubit quantum computer would equal the processing

power of a conventional computer that could run at 10

teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second).

Today's typical desktop computers run at speeds measured in

gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second).

Quantum computers could one day replace silicon chips, just

like the transistor once replaced the vacuum tube. But fornow, the technology required to develop such a quantumcomputer is beyond our reach. Most research in quantumcomputing is still very theoretical.


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The most advanced quantum computers have not gone beyond

manipulating more than 16 qubits, meaning that they are a far cry from

practical application. However, the potential remains that quantum

computers one day could perform, quickly and easily, calculations that

are incredibly time-consuming on conventional computers. Several keyadvancements have been made in quantum computing in the last few

years. Let's look at a few of the quantum computers that have been

developed

Forty qubits could have the same power as modern supercomputers.

According to Chuang a supercomputer needs about a month to find a

phone number from the database consisting of world's phone books,where a quantum computer is able to solve this task in 27 minutes


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1998

Los Alamos and MIT researchers managed to spread a single qubitacross three nuclear spins in each molecule of a liquid solution of

alanine

2000

In March, scientists atLos Alamos National Laboratory

announced the development of a 7-qubit quantum computer within

a single drop of liquid.


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2001

Scientists from IBM and Stanford University successfullydemonstrated Shor's Algorithm on a quantum computer. Shor's

Algorithm is a method for finding the prime factors of numbers

(which plays an intrinsic role in cryptography). They used a 7-qubit

computer to find the factors of 15. The computer correctly deducedthat the prime factors were 3 and 5.

2005

The Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the

University of Innsbruck announced that scientists had created the

first qubyte, or series of 8 qubits.


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2006Scientists inWaterloo and Massachusetts devised methods for

quantum control on a 12-qubit system. Quantum control becomes

more complex as systems employ more qubits.

2007

Canadian startup company D-Wave demonstrated a 16-qubit

quantum computer. The computer solved asudokupuzzle and otherpattern matching problems. The company claims it will produce

practical systems by 2008.


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Our current methods of encryption are simple compared to the

complicated methods possible in quantum computers. Quantumcomputers could also be used to search large databases in a

fraction of the time that it would take a conventional computer.

Other applications could include using quantum computers to

study quantum mechanics, or even to design other quantum

computers.

If functional quantum computers can be built, they will bevaluable in factoring large numbers, and therefore extremely

useful for decoding and encoding secret information. If one were

to be built today, no information on the Internet would be safe


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It is important that making a practical quantum computing is still far in

the future. Programming style for a quantum computer will also be quite

different. Development of quantum computer needs a lot of money. Even

the best scientists cant answer a lot of questions about quantum physics.

Quantum computer is based on theoretical physics and some experiments

are already made.

Building a practical quantum computer is just a matter of time. Quantum

computers easily solve applications that cant be done with help of todays

computers. This will be one of the biggest steps in science and will

undoubtedly revolutionize the practical computing world

COCLUSION


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Quantum Computers 3

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