Googles Quantum Computer

[12intheBox]

Pardon my inner geek coming out for a second - but I saw that Google says they have built a quantum computer that works.

As I understand it, a quantum computer would crush the computing power of all other computers on earth combined. If it really does work - it could be the biggest technological advancement in any of our lifetimes - no matter how old you are.

Anyone know more about it or what Google plans to do with it?

 

[CGI_Ram]

For those interested. Here is a quick overview of Quantum computing.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm

 

[CGI_Ram]

Pardon my inner geek coming out for a second - but I saw that Google says they have built a quantum computer that works.

As I understand it, a quantum computer would crush the computing power of all other computers on earth combined. If it really does work - it could be the biggest technological advancement in any of our lifetimes - no matter how old you are.

Anyone know more about it or what Google plans to do with it?

Interesting reads.

http://www.popsci.com/googles-quantum-computer-is-100-million-times-faster-than-yours

 

[Prime Time]

Now some of you guys can get your porn 100 million times faster. :mrburns:

Btw @CGI_Ram, Mr. Burns is my favorite new emoticon because it perfectly captures my mood most of the time.

 

[12intheBox]

I read up a bit more on it - sounds like they don't have it working for most practical applications yet - which is probably why it isn't all over the news.

Can you imagine being able to model anything you want? Genetics, astronomy, physics - nothing would be the same.

 

[Mackeyser]

100 million times really isn't that much faster considering the scale. A few orders of magnitude with the size of data sets of, say, climate, that they are trying to model and while that's some nice improvement, it's not Valhalla or Shangri-La. It's more like a few more days on the forecast or a few more data iterations because each subsequent set of interactions is geometrically more complicated less limits (call it Chaos theory where Quantum theory meets Newtonian mechanics).

What all that means is that it's like being at a buffet where each bite has to include new food and all the food on the last bite minus some a little that will fall off. Very quickly, even the biggest "home computer" will choke. Funny enough, only a few bites later, a dump truck would choke using that same model. Now, if the dump truck became the size of Rhode Island, what then?

Well, if you started with a small fork, wow, you'd see huge iterative benefits. If, however, you started with a fork the size of a fork lift because you're buffet is the size of the planet..., well, then it wouldn't take very long for the Rhode Island sized dump truck to choke as well. That's what Big Pharma does with drug testing and NOAA does with other agencies with respect to climate change.