«Актуальные вопросы в сфере социально-экономических, технических и естественных наук и информационных технологий» (3-4 апреля 2014г.)

Prudius A. V., Chernitskaya O. V., Komarova L. V.

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University

QUANTUM COMPUTER CREATED BY D-WAVE

Canadian company D-Wave, at the new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab has built only the second commercial quantum computer ever made.

It can perform tasks 3,600 times faster than normal computers do, and the organization is hoping to use it to find cures for diseases, fix climate problems and help robots to understand the human speech better.

So, what does the quantum computing mean? Einstein named the phenomenon as «spooky action at a distance». Today’s physicists name it as entanglement. Whatever term you use, the description refers to the ghostly link between subatomic particles that act in tandem no matter the distance between them.

Researchers expect the entanglement to teleport information instantly over hundreds of miles. Computer, that can teleport information could work up orders faster than today’s machines and perform tasks simultaneously. It could crack the most secure codes or parse reams of genomic data in a minute: tasks that may take years for ordinary computers.

Teleporting information within the restricted space of a computer, however, has posed a technical challenge – until now. Last August, the Swiss physicists successfully teleported information over the distance of 6 millimeters between two corners of a superconducting chip made from niobium, sapphire and aluminum; the superconducting chip is the basic building block of a quantum computer. Normal computers are digital and use bits to transfer information and perform tasks. For example, PCs found at home run on 32-bit or 64-bit processors. The ‘bits’ in modern-day computers can only ever be in an active, or an inactive state; running at one or zero. Which means that a single ‘bit’ is either on or off at definite time and it can only perform calculations individually. Quantum computation uses qubits (quantum bits), which can be in superposition of states: they can be on, off, or in a mixed state in between. As a result, qubits are able to be in multiple places at the same time and this means they are capable of performing single tasks faster and performing multiple tasks more effectively.

A distance of 6 millimeters may sound paltry, but it is a significant feat when encoded data must hop between the solid superconducting materials. And it is enough to enable the quantum machines to work.

As a result, Google wants to buy the computer to put it to work on complex tasks that everyday computers are unable to solve.

Google in particular could use the technology to improve the time of reaction and speed of processing of its self-driving cars, or develop its Google Glass technology – a wearable computer that responds to motion and voice.