Intel has just announced a monumental achievement that could make quantum processors available at scale.
Intel Corp.’s two primary research organizations, Intel Labs and Components Research, announced today that they’re making big progress as they work toward large-scale production of quantum computing processors.
At the 2022 Silicon Quantum Electronics Workshop in Orford, Quebec, Intel’s researchers said that they’ve been able to demonstrate the highest reported yield and uniformity rate when manufacturing “silicon spin qubit devices” at the company’s transistor research and development facility. The research is believed to be a key milestone for Intel as it moves toward being able to fabricate quantum computing chips on its existing transistor manufacturing processes.
Intel is a key player in the race to build quantum computers, which are more advanced machines that encode data as “qubits,” as opposed to the conventional bits used in traditional computers. The advantage of qubits is they’re not restricted to states of 1 or 0. They can also exist as both states at the same time, a characteristic that’s known as superposition.
A security investigator has discovered three new code execution flaws in the Linux kernel that might be exploited by a local or external adversary to take control of the vulnerable computers and run arbitrary code. The roccat_report_event function in drivers/hid/hid-roccat.c has a use-after-free vulnerability identified as CVE-2022–41850 (CVSS score: 8.4). A local attacker might exploit this flaw to run malicious script on the system by submitting a report while copying a report->value. Patch has be released to addresses the Linux Kernel 5.19.12 vulnerability CVE-2022–41850.
The second flaw tracked as CVE-2022–41848 (CVSS score: 6.8), is also a use-after-free flaw due to a race condition between mgslpc_ioctl and mgslpc_detach in drivers/char/pcmcia/synclink_cs.c. By removing a PCMCIA device while calling ioctl, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on the system. The bug affects Linux Kernel 5.19.12 and was fixed via this patch.
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Tiny particles are interconnected despite sometimes being thousands of kilometers apart—Albert Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.” Something that would be inexplicable by the laws of classical physics is a fundamental part of quantum physics. Entanglement like this can occur between multiple quantum particles, meaning that certain properties of the particles are intimately linked with each other.
Entangled systems containing multiple quantum particles offer significant benefits in implementing quantum algorithms, which have the potential to be used in communications, data security or quantum computing. Researchers from Paderborn University have been working with colleagues from Ulm University to develop the first programmable optical quantum memory. The study was published as an “Editor’s suggestion” in the Physical Review Letters journal.
Quantum computing and communication often rely on the entanglement of several photons together. But obtaining these multiphoton states is a bit like playing the lottery, as generating entanglement between photons only succeeds a small fraction of the time. A new experiment shows how to improve one’s odds in this quantum game of chance. The method works like an entanglement assembly line, in which entangled pairs of photons are created in successive order and combined with stored photons.
The traditional method for obtaining multiphoton entanglement requires a large set of photon sources. Each source simultaneously generates an entangled photon pair, and those photons are subsequently interfered with each other. The process is probabilistic in that each step only succeeds in producing pair entanglement, say, once in every 20 tries. The odds become exponentially worse as entanglement of more and more photons is attempted.
Christine Silberhorn from Paderborn University, Germany, and her colleagues have developed a new method that offers a relatively high success rate [1]. They use a single source that generates pairs of polarization-entangled photons in succession. After the first pair is created, one of these photons is stored in an optical loop. When the source creates a new pair (which can take several tries), one of these photons is interfered with the stored photon. If successful, this interference creates a four-photon entangled state. The process can continue—with new pairs being generated and one photon being stored—until the desired multiphoton state is reached.
The rise of quantum computing and its implications for current encryption standards are well known. But why exactly should quantum computers be especially adept at breaking encryption? The answer is a nifty bit of mathematical juggling called Shor’s algorithm. The question that still leaves is: What is it that this algorithm does that causes quantum computers to be so much better at cracking encryption? In this video, YouTuber minutephysics explains it in his traditional whiteboard cartoon style.
“Quantum computation has the potential to make it super, super easy to access encrypted data — like having a lightsaber you can use to cut through any lock or barrier, no matter how strong,” minutephysics says. “Shor’s algorithm is that lightsaber.”
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Three scientists who laid the groundwork for the understanding of the odd “entangling” behavior of quantum particles have received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
French physicist Alain Aspect, Austria’s Anton Zeilinger and American John Clauser were honored for their experiments exploring the nature of entangled quantum particles.
Chipmaker Micron Technology revealed on Tuesday ambitious plans to develop a $100-billion computer chip factory complex in upstate New York, in a bid to boost domestic chip manufacturing and possibly deal with a worrying chips shortage. The money will be invested over a 20 year period, according to Reuters.
The world’s largest semiconductor fabrication facility
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A group of researchers led by Cornell is unlocking the full potential of aluminum nitride—an important material for the advancement of electronics and photonics—thanks to the development of a surface cleaning technique that enables high-quality production.
The research was published Sept. 9 in the journal Science Advances. Graduate student Zexuan Zhang and research associate Yongjin Cho are the lead authors. The senior authors are Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing, both professors of materials science and engineering and of electrical and computer engineering.
Aluminum nitride has gained significant research interest in the field of semiconductor materials as it provides an unmatched combination of high electrical resistivity and thermal conductivity, according to Zhang. The ceramic material is used as an electrically-insulating but thermally-conducting barrier in electronic devices, and due to its ability to operate at deep UV frequencies, it has great potential for use in light-emitting diodes and lasers.
