Quantum Computing Takes Step Forward

Oh, cool, they got Windows 10 build right into the chip....

Advance the space program by light years? Does this mean we can send astronauts to the nearest stars?

Faster than the speed of parsecs.

Parsecs per fortnight.

Parsecs per leap year.

Yes, but it will be in simulations. ;-)

Who does research on potentially world-changing ideas/innovations these days? Think back to the quantum leaps that originated in big corporate development laboratories, with a few select innovations:

• Bell Labs -- transistors, UNIX, C programming language;
• Xerox PARC -- laser printers, GUIs, Ethernet
• IBM -- scanning electron microscope, FORTRAN, hard disk drives
• General Electric -- J47 Jet engine, CT scanning, solid-state lasers

Few corporations fund basic research these day. Google's following in the footsteps of giants. Some Google innovations -- think Google Glass -- don't set the world on fire. Others have that potential. I'm glad Google's willing to spend the $ whether or not the fruits of research are monetizable, as they say these days.

What does a 100 million times faster mean in human perception? Will this speed be translated to something that can be accommodated by human reaction.

For instance (as a possibly silly example but used for dramatic effect) will text on screen be any quicker for me to read if displayed 10⁸ faster.

I appreciate I must have missed the point, but unless this apparently enormous increase in speed (a quantum leap for the punster) is matched by the infrastructure, what use will it be.

Well I think the idea, to start off with anyway, is to enable access to this 'brain' online so that you can log on and insert your problem, with guidance of course, into the quantum architecture ...probably advanced modeling

If anybody can do it, Google can.

Whenever I have an idea, I "Google" it to see if anybody else has done it. I assume other people do the same thing, so all the good ideas end up at Google.

Does this mean we are finally getting rid of "Common Core Math".

Thanks.

Perusing through the links introduced me to some of the more arcane terminology of modern mathematics, such as "simulation annealing", a problem solving analog to thermodynamic annealing of solids or quasi-solids. I am reminded of the use of the word "secular" in describing economic phenomena and "hysteresis" (most typically applied in explicit thermodynamics) in a geotechnical context.

The cross-fertilization of terminology likely enriches the cognitive outcomes of those employing the terminology, more particularly those plunging into the Brave New World of qubits, which, someday, may themselves be intellectual cross-fertilizers.

Pardon ? isn't that a bit antidisestablishmentarianismaticly supercalifragilisticexpialidociousnessly brief?

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/science/an-advance-in-artificial-intelligence-rivals-human-vision-abilities.html

I mentioned this breakthrough to my daughter at the dinner table this evening. Her response was

1. Nobody yet has a working quantum computer and it will be 10-20 years before they go into production.

2. At a conference last month she and fellow programmer presented a paper describing an encryption signature that could not be broken by a quantum computer. So the software programmers have already defeated it's most useful application. (code breaking)

I just realized that since this is quantum computing it will take a step forward and a step back.