Flawed Diamonds May Be the Key to Quantum Computing

[deleted_by_strongbad]

Hello geeks, look at your your Si, now back to C, back to your Si, now back to C.
Sadly, it isn't C, but if we changed that around it could behave like it's C.
Look down the table, now back up. Where are you? You're at your supercomputer with facilities your S wishes to be.
What's in your computer? It isn't C, theirs is, it's a qubit formed through shining a laser through your C to do those things you love. Look again, YOUR BITS NOW INVOLVE SUPERPOSITION.
Incredible calculations are possible when your computer uses C and not like Si.
I'm posting a Bolch sphere.

Spoiler: Whistle

Hail Eris.

So does anyone else think it isn't a coincidence that the name Awschalom could have a pronunciation very similar to Awesome?

 

[antigodoflife]

Flawed Diamonds May Be the Key to Quantum Computing

I heartily approve of your juxtapositions of serious and funny.

Of course, what do you do with a 30 Terabyte Quantum Harddrive after you've downloaded everything on Steam and a few specialist interest videos? And who's gonna be the first to put Bejeweled on diamonds?

You proceed to download the internet.

ALL of it.

That's at least 10 petabytes... surely.

EDIT: Also... TOO MUCH PORNS!

 

[Baneat]

But can it run crysis?

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

A cookie to the first person to get doom on it

 

[Alkey42]

From what I understand, the advantage to quantum computing is parallelism not speed as you would normally associate with traditional computers. You write the data to the q-bit, you look away while it expands into every possible answer, then it passes through a filter that leaves only the correct answer.

So if you are adding 25+25, and traditional computer would accomplish this in a small number of cycles a few nano-seconds each. The quantum computer could do it, but it would probably take 100 milliseconds. But it would do it with 1 cycle.

But if you are factoring a number (which is the basis for standard encryption), the traditional computer guesses, checks it guess, then if it isn't correct it guesses again. A quantum computer does its 100 millisecond cycle, and outputs the right answer, all the guessing happens at once, instead of sequentially.

So quantum computers are awesome at certain things, like factoring and searching an unsorted database. They don't seem as fast or scalable as traditional computers at standard arithmetic.

 

[tahrey]

From what I understand, the advantage to quantum computing is parallelism not speed as you would normally associate with traditional computers. You write the data to the q-bit, you look away while it expands into every possible answer, then it passes through a filter that leaves only the correct answer.

So if you are adding 25+25, and traditional computer would accomplish this in a small number of cycles a few nano-seconds each. The quantum computer could do it, but it would probably take 100 milliseconds. But it would do it with 1 cycle.

But if you are factoring a number (which is the basis for standard encryption), the traditional computer guesses, checks it guess, then if it isn't correct it guesses again. A quantum computer does its 100 millisecond cycle, and outputs the right answer, all the guessing happens at once, instead of sequentially.

So quantum computers are awesome at certain things, like factoring and searching an unsorted database. They don't seem as fast or scalable as traditional computers at standard arithmetic.

So what you do is go multi-core / multi-processor in parallel. Like some of the old 80s machines (BBC, C128...) that featured a core Z80 or 6502 as their main chip, with an optional add-in of the other type so they could run a wider range of non-hardware-specific software (particularly CP/M on normally-6502 computers) and take advantage of each one's particular strengths (higher clock speed and more complex instructions but less efficient vs low clock, simpler instructions but better per-clock efficiency in that case ... sound familiar?).

This time, one quantum processing stream, one traditional, and you have a low level preprocessor that can split and reintegrate the data streams as appropriate. Kind of like how CPU + FPU combos used to work. In time you could bring them into the one chip (like the 486 integrating an FPU, or MMX being added to Pentiums to make up for their disappointing integer performance even compared to said 486).

Anyway this thread makes my head hurt. All I really wanted to add after reading the article was to say... adding impurities to a nonmetal solid in order to improve its conductivity or analogous properties, thereby producing a new material which is far more useful in the realm of signal processing (which is all computing really is when you get down to it)?

Meh, it's been done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor
Oooh I wonder where they got THAT idea?