Blog: William McKnight

Main

May 3, 2006

Data movement is key to quantum computing

This should be no surprise to us as data professionals, but it seems that the biggest challenge to having a breakthrough in quantum computing is the ability to ETL (extract, transform, load) data inside the computer. Current research, as described in "‘Data-In, Data-Out’ signals Quantum Breakthrough” from newscientist.com, is to encode the quantum state of an atom cloud and move it to another cloud. A photon was used as the temporary holding area as it was transported along a fiber optic cable.

This is another piece of revealed lab findings that highlights some of the work being done for quantum computing. It is progressive, but there’s a long way to go. As Matthew Eisaman, a member of the Harvard team, states in the article, “it is necessary to increase the time that quantum information can be stored from the atom clouds from millionths of a second to thousandths.”

Posted by William McKnight at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Controlling the speed of light for quantum computing

Speaking of quantum computing, controlling light appears to be key to bringing quantum computing closer to reality. Light travels at different speeds in water and glass and can even be stopped in ultra-freezing Bose-Einstein condensates, as explained in this article from the NASA web site.

The basic properties of matter can be probed through pulsating light in these conditions.

Posted by William McKnight at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 13, 2006

The great leap to Quantum Computing

We seldom take the time to consider the limitations brought on by the bit-based computers we use today where the state of any bit can be either 1 or 0, on or off. After all, so far, we've been able to double computing power about every 18 months. That's a nice rate of improvement, but ultimately unsustainable without a paradigm shift.

The most promising shift will be to quantum computing. Quantum computing, based on "qubits" which allow bits to be BOTH 1 and 0. As this 2000 article from MSNBC.COM attests, "As you string together more and more qubits, the power grows exponentially. If you link two qubits together, you can work with four values at the same time. Three qubits can work with eight values, and so on. If you can get up to 40 qubits, you could work with more than a trillion values simultaneously."

So far, quantum computing exists only in the lab. And, from what is leaked out, it sure very slow-developing. However, it's very possible that our children will work completely outside the limitations of on/off bits and detectable processing times for most computing requests.

Posted by William McKnight at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)