Google Working To Build Quantum Speed Computer Processors
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, September 3, 2014
The Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab has announced that John Martinis and his team at UC Santa Barbara will partner with Google to build new quantum information processors
based on superconducting electronics. The hardware project, led by Martinis, aims to make quantum
computers a reality. Think of the Web as the world's largest catalog to better understand why Google would want to bring quantum speeds to humanity.
Quantum speeds would increase the ability to index and process information not only across the Internet, but on servers supporting cloud computing and business intranets. It would make finding and serving information that much faster, which is especially critical as the amount of content continues to grow.
Google spent about $8 billion on research and development during fiscal 2013. Many of the initiatives work to improve Internet and on-site search, as well as online advertising. The smaller the processor the better the ability to integrate them into small wearable devices. The speed would support any Internet-connected or non-Internet-connected device that processes information.
Microsoft also has an initiative to build out quantum processing through its Quantum Architectures and Computation Group. A Microsoft research paper explains that today devices work in a clumsy, classical way. The transition would allow the hardware to become more in step with the fundamental language -- quantum mechanics -- of the universe. "The economic implications could be staggering," explains the paper. "The ability to harness quantum properties could usher in a second-coming of the computing age, one with vastly more power and speed than the silicon era."
In the paper, Jennifer Warnick explains that it's easy to be skeptical about whether harnessing an all-new kind of computing could yield meaningful results for humankind. "Consider this: six decades ago, many people might have been skeptical about the idea that in 60 years, 13-year-old kids would carry touchscreen computers in their pockets or that the average household would have access to a vast, searchable catalog of the world’s information," she writes.
People also might have been skeptical to think that advertisements could serve up in online media publications on a 3-inch screen of a portable within a fraction of a millisecond after a click on a hyperlink.
