D-Wave Systems previews a 2000-qubit quantum processor

[HEXUS]

Doubling the amount of qubits achieves up to a 1000x performance improvement.

Read more.

[SteK]

Yes, but can it run Crysis 3? (sorry,couldnt resist)

[Strawb77]

i bet the bods who bought last year`s model are plenty pissed
i mean, a thousand times faster
a thousand

[lumireleon]

Tech GROUP: DanceWithUnix/CAT-THE-FIFTH and all the rest scientists explain to me how quantum computers work and also expand on the following statement: Quantum computers can 'tunnel' through the landscape of the chart to find optimal solutions much faster than a binary computer.

[Tunnah]

Tech GROUP: DanceWithUnix/CAT-THE-FIFTH and all the rest scientists explain to me how quantum computers work and also expand on the following statement: Quantum computers can 'tunnel' through the landscape of the chart to find optimal solutions much faster than a binary computer.

I can't explain it properly as I'm not smart enough, I just read a LOT of things and memorize them without understanding, but I can answer the last statement.

Computers work by figuring stuff out in order, so the perfect result can't be found until all results have been looked at. Quantum computers can look at all results simultaneously

[DanceswithUnix]

Tech GROUP: DanceWithUnix/CAT-THE-FIFTH and all the rest scientists explain to me how quantum computers work and also expand on the following statement: Quantum computers can 'tunnel' through the landscape of the chart to find optimal solutions much faster than a binary computer.

You may have heard of "Schrödinger's cat", you need to get your head around that first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

So the idea of a quantum computer is that while a normal computer can use a 32 bit binary register to represent a single number up to 4 billion, in a quantum computer they represent all 4 billion possible values at the same time. When the computer does the equivalent of open the cat's box, the bits collapse into the result value. It would be useful for the sorts of computing problems where you are searching for a needle in a haystack, like finding the value of an encryption key is the one a lot of people are interested in (or scared of as it will mess up current internet security).

There seems to be some debate as to just how quantum this computer is, but it seems to have enough use for people to spend big money on it.

[lumireleon]

Thanks DWUnix with the nice explanation--- a normal computer can use a 32 bit binary register to represent a single number up to 4 billion, in a quantum computer they represent all 4 billion possible values at the same time.

[whatif]

Yes, but can it run Crysis 3? (sorry,couldnt resist)

Since these things have a operating temperature of almost absolute zero (down to 0.015K/-273.135°C) and a power consumption of up to 25kW (and these figures are the last gen machine D-Wave 2X), I don't think we will be having one as a gaming machine or HTPC in our backroom to soon, even with fancy watercooling. :-) (sorry, couldn't help adding my own piece of silly manutia)

[kalniel]

Since these things have a operating temperature of almost absolute zero (down to 0.015K/-273.135°C) and a power consumption of up to 25kW (and these figures are the last gen machine D-Wave 2X), I don't think we will be having one as a gaming machine or HTPC in our backroom to soon, even with fancy watercooling. :-) (sorry, couldn't help adding my own piece of silly manutia)

True, but you probably have more compute power in your phone now than we used to have in a server that took up a warehouse in the past..

[whatif]

I am happy those days are gone and now we have OS's, GUI's and all sorts of handy input devices.

[whatif]

True, but you probably have more compute power in your phone
now than we used to have in a server that took up a warehouse in the past..

:-)

I remember using those huge old computers when we had to use "shoe boxes" full of punch cards to run programs. We did not even have calculators back then, we had slide rules and log books. And yes, my mobile phone would have far more computing power, and definitely far more storage space with 160GB (32GB onboard and 128GB micro SD).