IBM is Rolling out the World's First Universal 'Quantum Computing' Service

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We're all excited about the potential of quantum computers - devices that will harness strange quantum phenomena to perform calculations far more powerful than anything conventional computers can do today.

Unfortunately, we still don't have a tangible, large-scale quantum computer to freak out over just yet, but IBM is already preparing for a future when we do, by announcing that they're rolling out a universal 'quantum-computing' service later this year.

The service will be called IBM Q, and it will give people access to their early-stage quantum computer over the internet to use as they wish - for a fee.

The big elephant in the room is that, for now, IBM's quantum computer only runs on five qubits, so it's not much faster (if any faster) than a conventional computer.

But their technology is improving all the time. The company has announced it hopes to get to 50 qubits in the next few years, and in the meantime, it's building the online systems and software so that anyone in the world can access the full power of its quantum computer when it's ready. IBM Q is a crucial part of that.

QuantumComputing. The three types of quantum computing. Credit: ExtremeTech

Unlike conventional computers, which use 'bits' of either 1 or 0 to code information, quantum computers use a strange phenomenon known as superposition, which allows an atom to be in both the 1 and 0 position at the same time. These quantum bits, or qubits, give quantum computers far more processing power than traditional computers.

But right now, qubits are hard to make and manipulate, even for more the most high-tech labs. Which is why IBM only has five qubits working together in a computer, despite decades of research. And those qubits have to be cooled to temperatures just above absolute zero in order to function.

Companies such as Google, and multiple university research labs, have also built primitive quantum computers, and Google has even used theirs to simulate a molecule for the first time, showing the potential of this technology as it scales up.

But instead of just focussing on the hardware itself, IBM is also interested in the software around quantum computers, and how to give the public access to them.

"IBM has invested over decades to growing the field of quantum computing and we are committed to expanding access to quantum systems and their powerful capabilities for the science and business communities," said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president of Hybrid Cloud and director for IBM Research.

IBM Q universal quantum computer Credit: YouTube

The system builds on the company's Quantum Experience, which was rolled out last year for free to approved researchers. IBM Q will use similar cloud software, but will also be open to businesses - and, more importantly, any programmers and developers who want to start experimenting with writing code for quantum systems.

The goal is to have a functional, commercial, cloud-based service ready to go when a fully realised quantum computer does come online.

"Putting the machine on the cloud is an obvious thing to do," physicist Christopher Monroe from the University of Maryland, who isn't involved with IBM, told Davide Castelvecchi over at Scientific American. "But it takes a lot of work in getting a system to that level."

The challenge is that while, on paper, a five-qubit machine is pretty easy to simulate and program for, real qubits don't quite work that way, because you're working with atoms that can change their behaviour based on environmental conditions

"The real challenge is whether you can make your algorithm work on real hardware that has imperfections," Isaac Chuang, a physicist at MIT who doesn't work with IBM, told Scientific American.

In their announcement, IBM said that in the past few months, more than 40,000 users have already used Quantum Experience to build and run 275,000 test applications, and 15 research papers have been published based off of it so far.

And they predict that in future, the quantum service will become even more useful.

"Quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen because the data doesn't exist and the possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous to ever be processed by classical computers," said IBM in its announcement.

There's no word as yet on how much IBM Q will cost to use, or how users will be approved. But we have to admit it'd be pretty cool to be among the first to play around with quantum computing.



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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Sciencealert . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Alan Mathison Turing, the mathematical genius and father of the computer that deciphered the famous Enigma code. A conviction for 'crime' of being gay brought death to 42 years.

How very sad it is when the prejudices of a society result in the promulgation of harsh laws within a system of justice which results in persons being treated most unjustly. Often the sentence imposed for the “crime” had widespread ramifications of devastating proportions. Just so is the tale of a renowned mathematician, the man often called the father of the modern computer, Alan Mathison Turing.


Turing was born on 23rd June 1912 of parents who, fairly typical of the time, travelled between England and India for most of his early life. He thus lived mostly with foster parents and at various boarding schools so he did not experience an ordinary family life. He was not much of a scholar but interested in science and mathematics, which was an embarrassment to his parents – for gentlemen of the time were required to study the classics and languages. It was only when he went to Kings College that he finally found the comfort of being accepted and experienced a sense of belonging.

Passport photo of Alan Turing at aged 16.

Turing was usually casually dressed and often looked rather scruffy. He chewed his nails and tended to stutter although those who knew him well noted that it seemed he used to think carefully before he spoke. At college, he enjoyed rowing and sailing.

He became a very good marathon runner and won a number of races. At one of the marathons he ran in 1948, he clocked a time just 11 minutes short of the Olympic winning runners – not a result to be sneezed at. He often used to run the 10 or so miles between his two places of work and explained that “I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my head is by running hard”

While having a brilliant mathematical mind, and furthering his studies in various areas of physics, biology, chemistry and even neurology, he was also fascinated by Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. However, by far his most far-reaching works were with regard to computer science. He created the universal Turing machine which was the basis of the first computer.

His exceptional expertise at being able to think “out of the box” and his ability to come up with ideas that had not been considered by more logical thinkers, were utilised during the WWII, at Bletchley Park. This secretive centre worked ceaselessly at breaking enemy codes.


Turing was instrumental in the cracking of, amongst others, one of the Nazi’s most damaging encryption codes, the Enigma. This enabled Britain to decode important, strategic German messages, thereby saving thousands of lives, in Europe and of those who were at sea. It is thought to have shortened the war by at least two years.

A complete and working replica of a bombe at the National Codes Centre at Bletchley Park. Photo Credit.

By 1950, his work, much of which was aimed at how machines can ‘think’, resulted in the development of a test for artificial intelligence which is still used today. Soon afterwards, he broke new ground in the area of morphogenesis which introduced another field of study – one of mathematical biology. He was an unusually brilliant man.

Then came personal disaster. While Turing had not kept his homosexuality a secret from his close friends and workmates, it was strictly against the law and governed by the Criminal Law amendment Act of 1885. He was arrested in 1952 and charged with indecency, for which he was subsequently convicted, having himself admitted to the charges while insisting that it shouldn’t be against the law.


The sentence imposed was one of chemical castration whereby a series of injections were administered which would cause him to become impotent. It was dreadful enough to be submitted to public humiliation but even worse was to come. Turin, now a convicted homosexual was deemed a security risk and so his Security Clearance was revoked, essentially cutting him off from the passion of his life – his work. It would seem that these two blows were just too much for him to deal with and were probably the reason for his suicide on 7th June 1954, at the age of 42.

Turing by Stephen Kettle at Bletchley Park, commissioned by Sidney Frank, built from half a million pieces of Welsh slate. Photo Credit.

Society has changed radically from that time and resultantly a number of very old and unjust laws have been changed. “The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times … but it does not make it any less wrong and we should apologize for it,” was what Robert Hannigan ( Head of Britain’s digital espionage agency) said in a speech at the conference organised in support of all gays and of their rights.

He apologised for the tremendous damage caused to homosexuals by such policies. In his speech he paid particular tribute to Turing as — “a problem-solver who was not afraid to think differently and radically.”

Turing’s story, as told in the film about him called ‘The Imitation Game’, shows today’s generation just what a genius he was. His Turing Machine has been described as the “foundation of the modern theory of computation and computability. “

Turing was granted a posthumous pardon by Queen Elizabeth II, under the “Royal Prerogative of Mercy,” after the request was submitted by Justice Secretary Chris Greyling.   One cannot turn back the clock but one should be glad the Turing memory has been so “cleansed”, even though more than 60 years later.


One wonders, however, what Alan Turing would have achieved and what legacy he would have left the world, had the times been more forgiving and had he lived his life to a ripe old age.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Warhistoryonline . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Quantum computer simulates hydrogen molecule

A prototype quantum computer has been used to calculate the electronic structure of a hydrogen molecule for the first time, demonstrating the possibility of performing complex quantum-mechanical simulations of molecular processes on such devices.


Updated 02/05/2020

The quantum computer was constructed by researchers at Google’s research laboratories in California, US. Together with colleagues elsewhere in the US and in the UK, a team led by John Martinis used the device to perform electronic structure calculations that they say can be readily scaled up to more complex cases.1

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The possibility of simulating quantum systems without the approximations necessary with classical computers was what prompted Richard Feynman to propose quantum computing back in 1982. As quantum computers have come closer to reality, much of the attention has been focused on the greater speed they should achieve relative to classical devices. But some feel that quantum simulation will end up being the ‘killer application’ that makes the effort worthwhile.

Roche - Quantum computers - Calculating the unimaginable

This is not the first time that a quantum-chemistry algorithm has been implemented on a proto-quantum computer. But previous efforts have not been able to exploit the full advantages of a quantum-based approach, because they have required costly ‘pre-computation’ steps on a classical computer, which limits the degree of complexity that can be handled this way. ’What is new here is that this work uses a scalable quantum computing architecture,’ says Matthias Troyer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who was not involved in the research.


A combined approach

Google’s digital quantum computer uses superconducting devices for its quantum bits (qubits), in which information can be encoded in the quantum states of the supercurrent.2 To carry out the electronic structure calculation for a hydrogen molecule, the researchers used two different methods, called the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) and phase-estimation algorithm (PEA).

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‘We might soon see quantum computers that outperform classical ones for certain problems’‘Both are efficient quantum algorithms for finding ground-state energies,’ says team member Peter O’Malley, ‘but they take different approaches and have different advantages and disadvantages.’ The PEA method can in principle get the answer with arbitrary precision, but only if there are no errors in the process.

In practice errors are always present, in which case the VQE method works better. This involves using a series of successive algorithms that gradually improve on an initial guess at the molecule’s wavefunction. By adjusting the parameters in the wavefunction, it is possible to compensate for errors incurred in the computational steps and still get an answer – for the dissociation energy, say – essentially the same as that obtained from a detailed classical simulation of the molecule.

The researchers say that it is already possible to simulate more complicated molecules than hydrogen with their device. ‘The benefit of quantum simulation is that you only need a quantum simulator roughly the size of the molecule you want to simulate,’ says O’Malley. The calculation used only a third of the available qubits, and the team is now building quantum chips that should be able to model small transition-metal complexes.


‘All of these problems are still trivial and the effort of just controlling the quantum computer is still much more than that of solving the problem classically,’ says Troyer. He adds that we may soon see quantum computers that outperform classical ones for certain problems, but that doing quantum-chemistry calculations beyond the power of classical computers will take a few years longer.

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source: rsc