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Category: computing – Page 915

Google team predicts quantum computing supremacy over classical computing around 2018 with a 40 qubit universal quantum computer

Google is to trying to combine the Adiabatic Quantum computing AQC method with the digital approach’s error-correction capabilities.

The Google team uses a row of nine solid-state qubits, fashioned from cross-shaped films of aluminium about 400 micrometres from tip to tip. These are deposited onto a sapphire surface. The researchers cool the aluminium to 0.02 degrees kelvin, turning the metal into a superconductor with no electrical resistance. Information can then be encoded into the qubits in their superconducting state.

The interactions between neighboring qubits are controlled by ‘logic gates’ that steer the qubits digitally into a state that encodes the solution to a problem. As a demonstration, the researchers instructed their array to simulate a row of magnetic atoms with coupled spin states — a problem thoroughly explored in condensed-matter physics. They could then look at the qubits to determine the lowest-energy collective state of the spins that the atoms represented.

Digital Currency Tech Will as Be Transformative as the Internet

Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance. Watch live as hundreds of the world’s leading investors, entrepreneurs and innovators gather in New York to define the future of the way we do business.

In Bitcoin’s early years computer scientists and early adopters were running the show. Now, a new community of academics, entrepreneurs, and economists, are working with cryptocurrencies and blockchain to bring the technology to a new set of diverse applications.

From building peer-to-peer networks for secure data computation and storage to decentralized content management systems that give patients access to health-care records across hospital databases, blockchain and digital currencies are starting to rewrite the rules of the 21st century transaction.

Using Adenosine Triphosphate to Create Biological Super-Computers

Machines running on human energy? Yes, it can happen, according to Dan Nicolau, Jr. from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California. Nicolau and his colleagues successfully completed a proof-of-concept study of a book-sized computer that runs on adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a biochemical that releases energy in cells and aids in energy transfer.

The study results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), describe the combination of geometrical modeling and engineering as well as nanotechnology to create circuitry that uses 1.5 × 1.5 cm in area and the naturally occurring protein to operate.

A More Sustainable Option

Other than the mere presence of a human energy source in a machine, an astounding aspect of the device is how, as opposed to electrical energy that produces heat, the biological agent powering this new computer enables it to remain cool and energy efficient, making it more sustainable.

Analogue quantum computation has been universally digitized using superconducting circuits

The QUTIS research group (www.qutisgroup.com) of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and Google’s quantum computation team have collaborated on a pioneering experiment that universally digitizes analogue quantum computation on a superconducting chip. This breakthrough was made at Google’s labs in Santa Barbara (California) and has been published in the prestigious journal Nature.

World-first pinpointing of atoms at work for quantum computers

Nice!

Scientists can now identify the exact location of a single atom in a silicon crystal, a discovery that is key for greater accuracy in tomorrow’s silicon based quantum computers.

It’s now possible to track and see individual phosphorus atoms in a silicon crystal allowing confirmation of quantum computing capability, but which also has use in nano detection devices.

Quantum computing has the potential for enormous processing power in the future. Current laptops have transistors that use a binary code, an on-or-off state (bits). But tomorrow’s quantum computers will use quantum bits ‘qubits’, which have multiple states.

US intelligence unit to advance management of virtual desktop security, systems

Getting a handle on cloud-based virtual operations is no easy task. Next month researchers from the Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity (IARPA) will introduce a new program that looks to address that management concern by developing better technology to manage and secure Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments.

+More on Network World: Intelligence agency wants computer scientists to develop brain-like computers +

IARPA, the radical research arm of the of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will introduce the Virtuous User Environment (VirtUE) which it says aims to “creatively define and develop user environments that are more dynamic, secure, auditable, transferrable, and efficient than the current offerings provided by traditional physical workstations and commercial VDI; develop innovative, dynamic analytics and infrastructures that can leverage these newly developed user environments to both automatically detect and deter security threats that IC user environments will be subject to in the new cloud infrastructure.”

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