In 1954, Albert Einstein, struggling with the weirdness of quantum mechanics, wrote that God does not play dice with the universe. A little over 60 years later, IBM and a handful of other organizations are not only playing with dice, they’ve learned how to consistently roll 7's, metaphorically speaking.
IBM set up a new business earlier this week, called Q, to commercialize quantum computing. IBM has had an experimental 5-qubit system for more than a year that the company said that 40,000 researchers around the world have already used for over 275,000 different experiments.
With the establishment of IBM Q, the company promised two things: easier access to the quantum computer it has now and a commercial system of approximately 50 qubits. IBM said that it intends to start selling a 50-qubit system “in the next few years,” but that's as specific as the company will get on the timing.
A computer bit (“binary digit,” you no doubt recall) is to a quantum bit (qubit) what the black-and-white color palette of the very first filmed cartoons (e.g., Gertie the Dinosaur) is to the spectrum of color of motion pictures filmed in high dynamic range (e.g., The Lego Movie). Whereas a bit can be either a 1 or a 0, a qubit can represent 1, 0, and also a range of values in between. The range increases exponentially with the number of qubits; a 250-qubit computer could contain more bits than there are particles in the universe.
As befits all quantum phenomena, qubits behave weirdly. Based on many of the extant papers, a significant percentage of the work on IBM's 5-qubit model is focused on simply characterizing the behavior of qubits and the functionality of quantum computers. One of the results of all of this research is that the weirdness can be characterized. It requires some sophisticated math to do it, but algorithms have been developed to take advantage of qubits for computing purposes.
A 50-qubit computer should represent a profound jump in power not only from 5-qubit models, but also from today's common digital processors. Such a device will enable people to solve problems that they literally could not hope to solve otherwise. For at least two years, IBM has been using the example of a caffeine molecule, which has so many possible quantum states that it is simply beyond the capability of standard computers to model them all — and caffeine is a relatively simple molecule.
The potential for developing new drugs obviously follows, perhaps even drugs designed for specific individuals. Other applications that IBM Q envisions for quantum computing include supply-chain management (think of the USPS in the weeks before Christmas), computer security, and as an adjunct to machine learning.
To entice more researchers to familiarize themselves with quantum computing in advance of producing a commercial product, IBM Q has introduced an application program interface (API) that will allow anyone to connect a standard computer to IBM's existing 5-qubit quantum computer via the IBM Cloud Platform. The company also released a simulator that will enable users to see what it might be like working with a 20-qubit version. The company promised a software development kit (SDK) for working with that 20-qubit simulation will be available by summer.
Beyond that, IBM has been parsimonious with details about its quantum computer; it did not return calls for this article.
For example, it's not clear what superconducting material that IBM is basing its quantum computer on, although Jerry Chow, manager of the experimental quantum-computing group at IBM Watson Research Center, said that it requires cooling near absolute zero in a 2015 TED Talk. The company has publicized work with niobium-aluminum alloys (which go superconducting near absolute zero) on silicon substrates but it has never said explicitly that these are the superconducting materials used in its quantum computers.
Jerry Chow's TED Talk:
There are questions about what it takes to scale up the number of qubits, which might provide some indication on the timing of IBM's promised introduction of a quantum computer with roughly 50. It took the company several years to double the count from 2 qubits to 4, which it accomplished in 2015. At that time, Chow said that IBM was experimenting with an 8-qubit model, but two years later, the company is still at 5.
It's also not precisely clear what the distinctions are between extant quantum computers, although that might be more easily extrapolated. The other most famous quantum computer is from D-Wave Systems Inc., which is barely more forthcoming on details than IBM.
In 2015, D-Wave introduced a commercial quantum-computing system with 1,000-plus qubits, which would appear to represent an eye-popping lead over IBM, but the two seem to be building different beasts. You can tell people that a goat and a moose are both ungulates, but there's not much more that the two have in common.
There are three different categories of quantum computer: quantum annealer, analog quantum, and universal quantum.
IBM calls the quantum annealer the least powerful and the most restrictive, though the easiest, to build. Annealers are restrictive inasmuch as they're suitable only for solving optimization problems, at least in IBM's opinion.
IBM characterizes the analog quantum as a system of between 50 and 100 qubits, with a more general applicability to a wider variety of problem types, though still a limited set.
IBM says that the most powerful quantum computer is the universal quantum. Such a device would consist of more than 100,000 physical cubits and would be useful for solving nearly any problem type. IBM says that such a device will be difficult to build; however, in part because of “a number of difficult technical challenges,” that will first have to be solved.
D-Wave and its partners, which include Google and NASA, are explicitly focusing on annealing systems.
It's not entirely clear where IBM is headed, but its dismissiveness of quantum annealers suggests that its ambition is greater. When the company talks about the problems that it is hoping to solve, those problems map against the list of applications that an analog quantum would be appropriate for; certainly the number of qubits is in the same order of magnitude.
That said, some of those same applications appear on IBM's list of applications that a universal computer would be good for, and occasionally, when IBMers talk about quantum computing, they refer to universal computers.
IBM also said that any organization interested in collaborating to explore quantum applications can apply for membership to the IBM Research Frontiers Institute, a consortium that develops and shares a portfolio of new computing technologies and evaluates their business implications. Founding members of the Frontiers Institute include Samsung, JSR, Honda, Hitachi Metals, Canon, and Nagase.
IBM is making the specs for its new Quantum API available on GitHub (https://github.com/IBM/qiskit-api-py) and providing simple scripts (https://github.com/IBM/qiskit-sdk-py) to demonstrate how the API functions.
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