BT and Toshiba have showcased the UK’s first use of secure quantum communication at the telecoms company’s research and development centre in Ipswich.
The showcase demonstrates the use of quantum cryptography for communications over fibre optic cabling. By exploiting the quantum states of photons, the most visible elementary particles in the electromagnetic spectrum, the cryptographic technique can be used to communicate securely over normal fibre cables.
Since they were first theorized by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, quantum computers have promised to bring about a new era of computing. It is only relatively recently that theory has translated into significant real-world advances, with the likes of Google, NASA and the CIA working towards building a quantum computer. Computer scientists are now warning that the arrival of the ultra-powerful machines will cripple current encryption methods and as a result bring a close to the great bitcoin experiment—collapsing the technological foundations that bitcoin is built upon.
“Bitcoin is definitely not quantum computer proof,” Andersen Cheng, co-founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Post Quantum, tells Newsweek. “Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears.”
The danger quantum computers pose to bitcoin, Cheng explains, is in the cryptography surrounding what is known as the public and private keys—a set of numbers used to facilitate transactions. Users of bitcoin have a public key and a private key. In order to receive bitcoin, the recipient shares the public key with the sender, but in order to spend it they need their private key, which only they know. If somebody else is able to learn the private key, they can spend all the bitcoin.
Eurolab HPC tries to assess the future disruptive technology for high performance computing beyond Exascale computers.
They survey the currents state of research and development and its potential for the future of the following hardware technologies:
CMOS scaling
Die stacking and 3D chip technologies
Non-volatile Memory (NVM) technologies
Photonics
Resistive Computing
Neuromorphic Computing
Quantum Computing
Nanotubes
Graphene and
Diamond Transistors
As I and others have warned industry about for a ling while now. Wait until you see the AI experience on QC and how we enable synthetic biocomputing on this connected infrastructure.
Next year, we may see the launch of the first true quantum computers.
The implications will be staggering.
This post aims to answer three questions:
The world of quantum computing is a minefield. The more scientists think they know about it, the more they realize there’s so much more to learn. But, with thanks to physicists in a laboratory in Canberra, we are that one step closer to seeing a real life working quantum computer as they managed to freeze light in a cloud of atoms. This was achieved by using a vaporized cloud of ultracold rubidium atoms to create a light trap into which infrared lasers were shone. The light was then constantly emitted and re-captured by the newly formed light trap.
Here’s why quantum computing represents the future for investment managers, analysts and traders on the buy-side and the sell-side.
http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/245138/pit-traders/
The unparalleled possibilities of quantum computers are currently still limited because information exchange between the bits in such computers is difficult, especially over larger distances. FOM workgroup leader Lieven Vandersypen and his colleagues within the QuTech research centre and the Kavli Institute for Nanosciences (Delft University of Technology) have succeeded for the first time in enabling two non-neighbouring quantum bits in the form of electron spins in semiconductors to communicate with each other. They publish their research on 10 October in Nature Nanotechnology.
Information exchange is something that we scarcely think about these days. People constantly communicate via e-mails, mobile messaging applications and phone calls. Technically, it is the bits in those various devices that talk to each other. “For a normal computer, this poses absolutely no problem,” says professor Lieven Vandersypen. “However, for the quantum computer – which is potentially much faster than the current computers – that information exchange between quantum bits is very complex, especially over long distances.”
Mediating with quantum dots Artist impression of two electron spins that talk to each other via a ‘quantum mediator’. The two electrons are each trapped in a semiconductor nanostructure (quantum dot). The two spins interact, and this interaction is mediated by a third, empty quantum dot in the middle. In the future, coupling over larger distances can be achieved using other objects in between to mediate the interaction. This will allow researchers to create two-dimensional networks of coupled spins, that act as quantum bits in a future quantum computer. Copyright: Tremani/TU Delft.
Researchers at the University of Melbourne have developed a way to radically miniaturise a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine using atomic-scale quantum computer technology.
Capable of imaging the structure of a single bio-molecule, the new system would overcome significant technological challenges and provide an important new tool for biotechnology and drug discovery.
The work was published today in Nature Communications, and was led by Prof Lloyd Hollenberg at the University of Melbourne, working closely with researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) to design the quantum molecular microscope.
