Summary: <p>What is a quantum computer and what is quantum computing? In this week’s episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/keysight_daniel?lang=en">Daniel Bogdanoff</a> and Mike Hoffman are joined by quantum computing expert <a href="http://ieee-ims.org/contacts/lee-barford">Lee Barford.</a></p> <p>Video Version (YouTube):</p> <div class="jetpack-video-wrapper"></div> <p>Audio Only:</p> <audio class="wp-audio-shortcode" id="audio-1115-20" style="width: 100%;"><a href="https://eestalktech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/what-is-quantum-computing-15.mp3">https://eestalktech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/what-is-quantum-computing-15.mp3</a></audio> <p><strong>0:45 Intro</strong></p> <p><a href="http://ieee-ims.org/contacts/lee-barford">Lee Barford</a> helps to guide Keysight into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing">quantum computing</a> business + enables the quantum computing experts at Keysight</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>2:00 The importance of quantum computing</strong></p> <p>Clock rates in all types of digital processors stopped going up in 2006 due to heating limits</p> <p>The processor manufacturers realized the need for more <a href="http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~itf/dbpp/text/node7.html">parallelism</a>.</p> <p>Today, Lee helps engineers at Keysight take advantage of this parallelism.</p> <p>Graphics processors can be used as vector and matrix machines</p> <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> utilizes this method.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>6:00 The implications of advancements in quantum computing</strong></p> <p>Today, there are parts being made with <a href="http://eestalktech.com/2017/05/25/all-about-asics/">feature size of the digital transistor</a> that are 10, maybe 7 nanometers (depending on who you believe)</p> <p>So we are heading below 5 nanometers, and there aren’t many unit cells of silicon left at that point. (a unit cell of silicon is 0.5 nanometer)</p> <p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle">uncertainty principle</a> comes into play since there are few enough atoms where quantum mechanical effects will disturb the electronics.</p> <p>There are many concerns including a superposition of states (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat">Schrodinger’s cat</a>) and low error tolerance.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>10:20 Is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law">Moore’s law</a> going to fail? </strong></p> <p>Quantum computing is one way of moving the computer industry past this barrier</p> <p>Taking advantage of quantum mechanical effects, engineering with them, to build a new kind of computers that for certain problems, promise to do better than what we currently do.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>15:20 Questions for future episodes:</strong></p> <p>What sort of technology goes into a quantum computer?</p> <p>What’s the current state of experimentation?</p> <p>What are some of the motivations for funding quantum computing research?</p> <p>How is Keysight involved in this industry?</p> <p>What problems is quantum computing aiming to solve?</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>17:30 Using quantum effects to our advantage</strong></p> <p>Quantum computers likely be used in consumer devices because there has to be a very low temperature and/or a vacuum.</p> <p>18:00</p> <p>A quantum computer’s fundamental storage unit is a qubit (quantum bit). A quantum bit (qubit) can be either 1 or 0 with some finite probability</p> <p>19:00<br> A quantum register can store multiple qubits, and when read, have a probability of being either of these numbers. A quantum register can store more than one state at a time, but only one value can be read from the quantum register.</p> <p>21:00 How does one get a useful value out of a quantum reg</p>
