IBM proclaims “the beginning of the quantum age of computing”
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.8174
“For the first time ever,” boasts an IBM press release , “IBM is making quantum computing available via the cloud to anyone interested in hands-on access to an IBM quantum processor, making it easier for researchers and the scientific community to accelerate innovations, and help discover new applications for this technology.” From Newsweek to IEEE Spectrum , the announcement in early May quickly began inspiring media attention that builds on interest and excitement seen in April concerning quantum computing.
MIT Technology Review simply calls quantum computing the use of “quantum physics to circumvent rules of everyday reality that limit the power of conventional computers.”
A passage from the New York Times summarizes the IBM news:
The possibilities of a new class of computers that are able to exploit the most basic properties of energy and matter to speed calculations beyond what is possible with today’s digital systems has long held both promise and controversy. The systems are based on the notion of a “qubit,” or quantum bit—a basic value capable of encompassing more information than the 1’s and 0’s that are the basis of classical digital computing.
A computing system composed of just five qubits, which is what IBM built, would not be able to replace current personal computers. However, the IBM Quantum Experience will allow students, hobbyists and even serious researchers to experiment with algorithms that are radically different from the ones now used for everything from word processing to speech recognition.
“It’s meant to be educational, but also to be the beginnings of a larger framework,” said Jerry M. Chow, manager of the Experimental Quantum Computing Group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
IBM researchers have recently demonstrated a quantum computer that they believe will one day be scaled up to a machine that might have hundreds of qubits and be able to run a wide range of algorithms more quickly than today’s computers.
Just last month, quantum computing was in the news following its highlighting by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics introduces a one-minute YouTube clip about that by explaining that during Trudeau’s April visit to the institute, a journalist “jokingly” asked him to explain quantum computing. He “called their bluff with a spot-on explanation.” The clip shows delighted spectators.
Also in April, a Newsweek piece reported about a European document called Quantum Manifesto: A New Era of Technology. The manifesto describes itself as “a call to launch an ambitious European initiative in quantum technologies, needed to ensure Europe’s leading role in a technological revolution now under way.” Newsweek quoted Tommaso Calarco, director of the German organization Integrated Quantum Science and Technology and one of the document’s authors. He predicted effects “from security and communications, to health and metrology,” but stipulated that “no one expects” quantum computers “to be on the market within the next 10 years.”
Newsweek‘s April article recalled that Nobel laureate Richard Feynman had theorized in 1982 about quantum computers and that one “of the field’s pioneers, physicist David Deutsch, famously claimed that quantum computers hold the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.” The article quoted Matthias Troyer, a computational physics professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Zurich: “Quantum technologies have matured to the point where we are ready to transition from academic projects to the development of competitive commercial products that within the next decade will be able to perform tasks that classical devices are incapable of.”
A posting at Forbes.com suggested that not only is the IBM announcement “big news,” but “it also opens the door to something much bigger—a truly new era for cloud computing.” Wired reported that David Cory of the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing has tested IBM’s new service and has a highly favorable view of it.
MIT Technology Review‘s article cites Scott Aaronson, an associate professor at MIT, who looks forward to the advent of “‘quantum supremacy'—the power to solve a computational problem immensely difficult and perhaps practically impossible for conventional machines.” Aaronson says, “The first clear demonstration of quantum supremacy will be a huge milestone in the history of physics and computer science. It’s plausible, though not certain, that it could be achieved in the near future.”
Thumbnail credit: IBM Research
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.