Ultrafast Quantum Computer Closer: Ten Billion Bits of Entanglement Achieved in Silicon

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2011) — Scientists from Oxford University have made a significant step towards an ultrafast quantum computer by successfully generating 10 billion bits of quantum entanglement in silicon for the first time -- entanglement is the key ingredient that promises to make quantum computers far more powerful than conventional computing devices.


The researchers used high magnetic fields and low temperatures to produce entanglement between the electron and the nucleus of an atom of phosphorus embedded in a highly purified silicon crystal. The electron and the nucleus behave as a tiny magnet, or 'spin', each of which can represent a bit of quantum information. Suitably controlled, these spins can interact with each other to be coaxed into an entangled state -- the most basic state that cannot be mimicked by a conventional computer.

An international team from the UK, Japan, Canada and Germany, report their achievement in the journal Nature.

'The key to generating entanglement was to first align all the spins by using high magnetic fields and low temperatures,' said Stephanie Simmons of Oxford University's Department of Materials, first author of the report. 'Once this has been achieved, the spins can be made to interact with each other using carefully timed microwave and radiofrequency pulses in order to create the entanglement, and then prove that it has been made.'

more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110122110640.htm

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. In 20 years the computers will have consciousness

and outdo our brains if we keep going at this rate.

Remember that old scifi movie
Colossus: The Forbin Project?

I think you can watch it on youtube.
Anyway, with computers of the future
space exploration to the stars might be possible.

[DetlefK]

2. How do you define "consciousness"?

The ability to stray from implemented mind-sets?
The ability to handle abstract variables?


We surely have the capacity to compute a neural network the size of a human's or animal's brain, but the problem is, that the human brain has so many feedback loops that it's almost impossible to train and prune such a NN. And in my opinion, any conscious brain should be as complex as a human brain.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. I think Quantum Computing may solve the problem

of feedback loops. The first Cray supercomputer ran on only an 80Mhz vector processor CPU. Processing power would top out at 136 Megaflops. (Remember that a typical laptop today can do about 15GIGAflops.) It could support a maximum memory of 8MB of RAM — unheard of in those days. Twenty years from now? who know maybe
the computers will themselves create another class of computers in another Singularity that they themselves will not understand. Will they be able to pass the Turning Test?
I have no doubt that they will





A couple of links on the subject:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/quantumcomputation.html


http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/do-you-need-a-quantum-computer-to-achieve-machine-consciousness

[DetlefK]

4. Computers creating Computers? ;-)

There is a SF-novel about this: Golem XIV by Stanislav Lem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV )

The problem is NOT raw computational power. The problem is to find the proper parameters and to implement the proper surveillance programs to train the neural network into a working device.

If a NN is not trained enough (-> not enough experience), it is not able to make the correct decisions.
If a NN is overtrained (-> too much experience), it becomes too narrow-minded and unable to think outside the boundaries of its experience.
The problem is, finding the point where more experience would do more harm than good. And this is a mathematical problem.

[immoderate]

5. Can they then tell us what consciousness is?

I don't think we know.

Are we smart enough to build a computer smarter than us?

--imm

[TalkingDog]

6. How soon after do they start searching for Sarah Connor?

nt

[Raster]

7. The Singularity is near.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near

[loudsue]

8. Looks like the good ole USA was left on the playground studying Creationism

But I'm glad SOME countries are making strides!