Google’s new quantum computer is '100 million times faster than your PC

Google’s Quantum Computer – 100 Million Times Faster

Google together with NASA has been working on a lightning fast quantum computer which seems to be 3,600 times quicker than a super computer in solving difficult problems. The artificial intelligence lab of the technology company is of the belief that they may eventually have proof that their opinion dividing quantum computer would actually work.

 Google and NASA have announced that they would be collaborating on the D-Wave X2 quantum computer which according to them is 100 million times faster than a conventional computer chip in 2013. It has the capabilities of answering certain systems in second instead of years. Google’s interest in D-Wave machine which has also been invested in by IBM as well as Microsoft is due to the large power quantum computers that could potentially unlock.

 The weirdness of the so called quantum mechanics, where the basic laws of physics tend to break down, has the capabilities of solving long standing issues in machine intelligence and materials science. On the part of NASA, the computers could support schedule rocket launches or even produce complex simulation of space missions.

Quantum Monte Carlo

Hartmut Neven, Google director of engineering had commented that for a specific carefully crafted proof of concept problem, they had achieved a 100 million fold speed up. He had also added in a blog post that they had found that for problem instances involving almost 1,000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly beats its classical counterpart, simulated strengthening and is more than 108 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core.

The quantum hardware to another algorithm known as Quantum Monte Carlo was also compared. This method had been designed to match the behaviour of quantum systems though it tends to run on conventional processors. While scaling with size between two methods was comparable they were again separated by a large element at times as high as 108.

The computer figures out the most efficient overall course of action in completing a task and a set of number of options has been provided and could be key to the innovation of next generation artificial intelligence according to Engadget.

Disruptive Technology

Cynics have questioned whether the computer actually taps into quantum physics to resolve procedures, though Google and NASA informs that they have proof. The director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames research centre in California, Deepak Biswas, has commented that `it is a disruptive technology which could alter how we tend to do everything.

Quantum computing depends on quantum bits or qubits and unlike the traditional computers wherein the bits should have a value of zero or one, a qubit could represent a zero, a one or even both the values at the same time.

Signifying information in qubits enables to process the information in ways which have no equivalent with regards to classical computing, taking advantage of the occurrences like quantum tunnelling together with quantum entanglement. Quantum computers may theoretically be capable of solving certain issues within a few days which on a classical computer would take millions of years.

Google Says It Has Proved Its Controversial Quantum Computer Really Works

Google’s Controversial Quantum Machine- Quicker than Conventional Computer

Google has informed that it has proof of a controversial machine bought in 2013, can use quantum physics to work through a kind of math which is critical to artificial intelligence and much quicker than a conventional computer. Governments together with leading computing companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM are putting in efforts in the creation of quantum computers due to which the improbability of quantum mechanics in representing data could unlock huge data crunching powers.

Computing giants are of the opinion that quantum computers can make their artificial intelligence software more commanding, unlocking scientific leaps in the field of materials science.

 NASA is expecting that quantum computers could be helpful in scheduling rocket launches and feign future missions as well as spacecraft. Rupak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California has commented that `it seems a disruptive technology which could change how we do everything. At media briefing at the research centre, Biswas had commented, regarding the agency’s work with Google on a machine which the company had bought in 2013 from Canadian start-up D-wave systems that it is the world’s first commercial quantum computer.

Superconducting Chip –Quantum Annealer

The computer has been installed at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California, operating on data utilising superconducting chip known as a quantum annealer. Quantum computer is hard coded with system fitted to what is known as optimization problems that are common on machine learning and artificial intelligence software.

But in the case of D-Wave’s chips it seems to be controversial among quantum physicists and researchers in and out of the company have not been capable of proving that the devices could tap into quantum physics in competing with conventional computers. The leader of Google’s Quantum AI Lab in Los Angeles, Hartmut Neven, had stated recently that his researchers had delivered some firm proof of that.

 They had set up a series of races between the D-Wave computers that was installed at NASA against a conventional computer with a single process. He commented that `for a specific carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem, they had achieved a 100 million-fold speed-up.

Bug in D-Wave Design

A research paper describing the results online had been recently posted by Google though it has not been formally peer-reviewed. Neven had stated that the journal publication would be coming up soon. The results of Google were striking though if they were verified, would only represent fractional evidence for D-Wave. 

The computer which had lost in the contest with the quantum machine had been running a code that solved the problem at hand utilising a system to the one that was in the D-Wave chip. A substitute system is known which could have enabled the conventional compute to be more competitive or win by exploiting what Neven has called a `bug’ in D-Wave design.

Neven had stated that the test which his group had staged tends to be still important since that shortcut would not be available to the regular computers when they tend to compete with the future quantum annealers with the potential of working on larger amounts of data.

A physics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Matthias Trover had said that making that to come true could be crucial if chips like D-Wave are to be useful. It would be essential to explore if there are issues where quantum annealing has advantage over the best classical systems and to identify if there are classes of application problems, where these advantages could be realized.

Announcing the D-Wave 2X Quantum Computer

D-Wave Systems Incorporation launched the world’s first quantum computer named D-Wave One which was commercially available on May, 2011. It operates on 128-qubit chipset and it uses quantum annealing technology in order to solve optimization problems. Many of the you don’t know what is a Qubit. Qubit is a quantum analogue of bit and it is a unit of quantum information used in quantum computing. It is also referred as quantum bit.

About D-Wave 2X Quantum Computer

D-Wave Systems is the only company based in British Columbia, Canada, known to sell quantum computers worldwide. It recently announced the availability of the new generation of quantum computers, named D-Wave 2X. D-wave 2X will help customers to solve very complex as well as larger problems with its 1000+qubits capacity including other advancements in technology.

Besides having beyond 1000 qubits capacity, it also incorporates other scientific technologies. Advancements include it operates at 15millikelvin temperature, very close to absolute zero. Having 128,000 Josephson tunnel junctions, it consists of most complex superconductor integrated circuits as new processors ever used successfully. Its 50% noise reduction has led to its quicker performance.

Performance of D-Wave 2x

A number of benchmark tests have been done in order to compare it with ordinary PCs to solve optimization problems.

One of the benchmarks is computation time. Computation time needed to solve complex optimization problems with bigger problem size is same for both classical as well as quantum processors. Therefore it becomes prohibitive for the 1000+qubit D-Wave 2x processor to find the optimal solution. Even if optimal solutions are obtained, many large scale solvers tried to find solutions which were close to optimal and they were given a specified time to submit the best solution obtained.

In order to solve hardware problems, D-Wave Systems established Time to Target (TTT) metric. Summary of TTT are given below:

• Near optimal solutions were found to be 600times faster than usual comparable times by highly skilled solvers. Quantum anneal time is used for this comparision.
• Using total time measurements D-wave 2x found near-optimal solutions 15x faster than the solvers.
• The hardware problems are of best performance than software solvers, which is of high advantage by using D-Wave 2x.
• The difference between optimal and near-optimal solutions is very less around 1% less. But D-Wave 2x works 100x faster to find near-optimal solutions rather than optimal ones.

D-Wave’s product, the 1000+qubit D-Wave 2X quantum computer, is the most technologically advanced efficient quantum computer in the world. It is based on the concept of using a novel type of superconducting processor that takes the help of quantum mechanics to accelerate computation massively. It is the best computer that can tackle complex optimization problems that exist across many domains such as:

• Optimization
• Financial Analysis
• Machine Learning
• Pattern Recognition
• Software/Hardware Verification

D-Wave 2x is such a high precision quantum computer that it can evaluate 21000 possible solutions that are converged to near-optimal solutions, thus having more possibilities than the articles that exists in this universe. The powerful effect of quantum computation is not shown by any ordinary computers of any kind that could represent such huge number of possibilities, thus making D-Wave 2x Quantum Computer a cutting edge technology.