7-Bit Quantum Computer

Processing at the speed of light

Beam Me Some Processor Time

Last week, The New York Times reported activity that's drawing attention at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In front of a nondescript stucco building is a small sign that reads "Warning! Magnetic Field in Use. Remain on Sidewalk."

Any sign that warns us to stay away is, to some people, a just an invitation to come closer. But if you do, make sure you leave your credit cards, cassettes, and pace maker at home. This building houses a STRONG magnetic field. And it's used for some interesting research.

The magnetic field is emanating from the supercooled, superconducting magnets inside a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. N.M.R. machines are used in chemistry labs across the world to map the architecture of molecules by sensing how their atoms dance to the beat of electromagnetic waves, and hospitals use similar technology for magnetic resonance imaging, M.R.I., scans.

But the Los Alamos project will have an effect on all of us in the IT business. Using radio waves to manipulate atoms the government scientists will encourage 10 crotonic acid molecules to execute a simple computer program. This will be a world's record. Last year, seven atoms were used to run as a CPU, but this attempt, with 10 atoms, makes the processor much, much faster. Exponentially faster.

According to the NY Times, here's how the quantum computer works. Each atom can be thought of as a little switch, a register that holds a 1 or a 0. But rather than needing millions of registers, like conventional CPUs, the paradoxical laws of quantum mechanics confer a powerful advantage: a single atom that enable it to do two calculations at once. And the rules of math enable really fast processor growth: Two atoms can do four calculations, three atoms can do eight, four atoms can to 16, five atoms can do 32. With 10 atoms the tiny computer that can carry out 1,024 (2 to the 10th power) calculations at the same time.

Quantum computers have been used to search simple databases and perform other parlor tricks, but the real power comes from the atom's (called qubits) ability to maintain multiple states at the same time. Each atom can be both a 0 and a 1 at the same time (as long as we don't check it's state).

To put this in perspective, a 30-qubit quantum computer would be roughly equivalent to a conventional computer running at 10 teraops, or trillions of operations per second. The fastest supercomputers in the world have achieved speeds of about two teraops.

I think all of us in the IT professions should study as much as we can how quantum information and quantum computers work. Most of us will see this become the state of business computing within our lifetimes. The sooner we get to understand how it will affect us and our clients, the better prepared we'll be as consultants and trainers.

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updated April 3, 2001
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