With talk of Tesla moving into quantum or near-quantum computing to attempt to solve their autopilot issues, let’s be familiarized with the concept. Quantum computers are data storage and processing machines that make advantage of quantum physics features. This may be tremendously beneficial for some jobs, where they can greatly outperform even our most powerful supercomputers.
Tesla debuted its Dojo supercomputer technology at its AI Day in 2021, showcasing its increasing in-house chip design skills. Tesla claims to have created the world’s fastest AI training machine. The creation of an in-house supercomputer designed for neural net video training has been hyped for years.
In the near future, there’s a good chance quantum computers will be a game changing technology for humanity. The industry is still in its early stages, with computer scientists around the world as well as technology giants such as IBM and Google working to develop them. So what exactly makes them different from our current computers and mobile devices? Jessica Pointing, a PhD student and researcher in quantum computing at Stanford University and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni, explains the basics.
We’re on a path to build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer within the decade. This will accelerate solutions for some of the world’s most pressing problems, like sustainable energy, and unlock new scientific discoveries, like more helpful AI. It begins at our new Quantum AI campus in Santa Barbara.
IBM’s new Quantum Computer breaks the current world record in terms of Qubits and ushers in a new era of quantum supremacy. It’s also IBM’s last chance of potentially undoing its rise and fall among the biggest tech companies in the world that has been occuring these last few years. The Eagle Quantum computer has 127 qubits and can outperform the fastest supercomputers in the world in certain tasks and calculations. Whether or not Google’s Quantum AI company will come back from behind is currently uncertain. But one thing is for sure: The future of Quantum Computers does look very bright.
IBM has created the world’s largest superconducting quantum computer, surpassing the size of state of the art machines from Google and Chinese researchers. Previous devices have demonstrated up to 60 superconducting qubits working together to solve problems, but IBM’s new Eagle processor more than doubles that by stringing together 127.
Computers are the nerve center of our lives, opening us to a world of speed, data, and information. In Shenzhen, a city in China’s south, inventors are working on quantum computing, the next frontier of tech.
The world is getting more and more advanced and the space race is speeding up day by day. All the companies are working to build the most advanced technology. SpaceX, the leading space company, has shocked the world and conquered the space by developing the most powerful rocket ever, a medium-lift launch vehicle, small satellite telecommunications networks to generate revenue, and an experimental launch vehicle system along with the Starship to invest in research and development. In all that. Another huge step has been taken by spaceX that is completely going to uplift the already strong position of spaceX in space.
In early 2020, Elon Musk had decided to partly withdraw from his roles as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX in order to focus on his new business endeavour. This new venture is called Quantum AI. According to Morgan Stanley, a multinational investment bank and financial services company’s analyst Adam Jonas, SpaceX could be at the forefront of a radical change in communications using quantum physics.
So, what exactly is this Quantum AI? By definition, Quantum AI is the use of quantum computing for computation of machine learning algorithms. Thanks to computational advantages of quantum computing, quantum AI can help achieve results that are not possible to achieve with classical computers. QuantumAI is an upgrade from computers as you know them. In fact, Elon beat IBM, Microsoft and few others who have been developing this form of computing for years to the punch. This is not just a technology – it’s a technology on steroids.
It is the most powerful computer. Do you want to know how much power is making the Quantum AI the most powerful one? So, if you take all the computers of the world and then link them together, you will still be 100 times less powerful than the Quantum AI computing. So just a single Quantum computer is 100 times more powerful than all the computers of this world. Now the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire, Elon Musk is going to use the Quantum AI in different fields. Its one use will be in the Space communications.
The appeal of a space-based quantum communications network is that it has a greater range and is more flexible than a terrestrial fiber-based network. According to the analyst from Morgan Stanley, from a SpaceX perspective, the commercial potential of quantum communications networks and its potential advantages of its rapidly deploying in-space comms architecture may provide significant optionality to the story and its valuation.
He further said, to our knowledge, SpaceX has not commented in detail on the enabling technology (ie. particle entanglement generators, quantum repeaters, random number generators, advanced cryogenics, etc) or the economic potential of quantum communications, we believe the company’s increasingly dominant position in space, satellite communications and DoD/government work makes this a natural extension of their capabilities.
The need for such massive technology here is that due to long distances in space, it is difficult to send the information like photographs taken by the satellites or the data they have gathered to Earth. There is a lag time between sending the information and receiving it.
In the form of entangled photons and satellites, quantum technology (applying quantum physics concepts in technology form) can make space communication easier and faster. High-definition images and videos might be delivered faster and more efficiently using these communication methods. This, in turn, would broaden the scope of space exploration and improve space travel by allowing astronauts to communicate more quickly with experts on Earth.
In a 2020 article for Wired Magazine, NASA paired with MIT’S Lincoln Laboratory to develop a quantum laser system to help relay information from the ISS. Soon after that, spaceX announced the news.
Now how is the Quantum going to be used for space communications. The quantum method will use a low-orbit satellite to send encrypted messages to ground-based stations with greatly increased distance between the two communicating parties, compared to other methods of communication.
Quantum computing review of the past 12 months, including IBM roadmaps, Zuchongzhi and quantum supremacy, photonic quantum computing, and quantum computing as a service (QCaaS).
(This is part 1 or at least a 2 part series on quantum computing. Each video will be successively more in-depth.) Classical and quantum computers share many general components – power supply, data storage, RAM memory, motherboard, but they differ in the way the central processing unit (CPU) works. A classical CPU is made from transistors, which is like an on/off switch. If it is on, then it’s like the number 1 or true. If it is off it’s like the number 0 or false. This is what binary means. A transitor represents a binary bit.
Quantum computers do not use binary bits, they use quantum bits or qubits. What is a Qubit? It is a bit in a superposition of 1 and 0. What does superposition mean? Quantum theory shows that quantum objects such as electrons, prior to measurement, are in multiple states at the same time. So something like the spin of an electron, which is a measurement of its intrinsic angular momentum, when measured is either up or down. When not measured, it is in both states of up and down. This is what superposition is.
If you visualize a qubit as a sphere, a classical bit can be 1 or 0 – the north pole or south pole. But a qubit can be in any place on the surface of this sphere depending on the superposition. A single qubit can be any mixture of 1 and 0, so the possible values are infinite! So whereas the classical binary bit can only take one of two values, the superposition allows a qubit to take on a potentially infinite number of values.
A qubit can be created by any quantum object like photons, electrons or even atoms. It doesn’t really matter. It just needs to be a quantum object in superposition. Qubits allow us to ask several questions at once during computation, “what is the result if the qubit is one? What is the result if the qubit is zero? What is the result if it is anything in between?”– thus we can calculate the process where the bit is both zero and one and anything in between.
This downside is that the result of the computation will also be in superposition. This means that the quantum computers needs to maintain superposition throughout the process. The inputs AND outputs are both in superposition. The quantum computer operates WITHOUT any measurement of any kind. Because there are no measurements, the computer state evolves according to quantum mechanics.
The computer follows multiple computational paths at the same time, analogous to the way a photon could follow multiple paths through a double slit experiment. It only has a certain probability of ending up on certain locations.
However, at the end, there has to be a measurement to get a final result. And this final result from the computer is always classical. It is going to be a one or zero. How do we know whether we should get a one or zero? This is controlled by the quantum algorithm, which are clever programs created by programming scientists that use mathematical tricks to make sure that the probability of getting the correct is answer is as high as it can be.
How do quantum Algorithms work? They word by applying destructive interference on the wrong results, and constructive interference to the correct results. It does a kind of interference experiment to find the most likely answer.
So how is this so much more powerful than classical computers for solving problems? The quantum computer doesn’t do the usual stuff in a faster way. It doesn’t calculate all the possible results very quickly. It calculates all functions for all inputs at once. It calculates multiple functions at once for multiple possible inputs.
Why is it hard to build quantum computers?
Qubits have to be isolated from the outside world. They cannot interact with any molecules or photons or other particles. This requires extreme cooling, because heat can modify or destroy the superposition by interacting with Qubits. So, this is why quantum computers are cooled to near absolute zero, that’s -273 degrees Celcius, to effectively eliminate all external thermal energy, so that the superposition is not modified or broken. In addition, Qubits can’t talk to the outside world, but they have to be able to talk to each other very fast. So these connections that the qubits must have with each other is not trivial.
