Emerging tech News

Start-up shows off quantum computer

Tags:
Orion,
Quantum

Michael Kanellos CNET News.com

Published: 15 Feb 2007 09:02 GMT

…special programming techniques or other tricks to take advantage of the service; sending a problem to D-Wave will be similar to outsourcing it to any other company. Later, D-Wave may lease or sell computers, Martin added.

By the second quarter of 2008, the company plans to have a 512-qubit system, and a 1,024-qubit system is expected by the end of that year. Quantum computers, Martin emphasised, will not displace digital computers. Instead, they will serve as co-processors for large problems.

But is there a market for renting computing cycles? Sun a few years ago opened up a server farm for hire for chemical and pharmaceutical companies. It has found few takers.

D-Wave's appeal differs in that its computer will be able to solve much larger problems than companies are currently able to tackle, said Steve Jurvetson, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson and an investor in D-Wave. Many medical outfits limit the scope of their research to fit the existing computational abilities. D-Wave has 100 patent applications filed, and 35 have been granted.

However, how larger systems will behave remains unknown, Rose said. D-Wave has engineered its chip so that the qubits are insulated from noise and other factors, and he has confidence that the number of qubits can be increased, "but we could be wrong", he said.

Another distinct advantage that the computer will have comes in energy consumption. Niobium is a superconductor and therefore does not radiate heat. The chip itself requires only a few nanowatts.

The refrigeration unit consumes the most power at 20 kilowatts, which is still small compared with most server farms. Expanding the number of qubits on the chip will not require massive increases of refrigeration, Rose added.

Even with the explanations, quantum concepts can be a little tough to digest. Rose reminded the audience that humans consist of atoms that first appeared in a supernova billions of years ago. Trying to understand those atomic interactions that lead up to the present is at the heart of quantum computing.

"When I went to school, they didn't teach quantum mechanics," Martin said. "Newton was my boy."