IBM Researchers Can Now Spot Errors In Quantum Calculations

IBM researcher Jerry Chow in the quantum computing lab at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center.

IBM researchers say they’ve solved a big piece of the quantum computing puzzle with a new system for protecting against errors that can crop up among quantum bits, or ‘qubits.’

The issue the team is addressing is similar to an error that can crop up among the bits storing data in traditional computing. Sometimes, a bit that ought to be a 0 turns up as a 1 (or vice-versa), resulting in inaccurate or broken data. To deal with this, an extra bit is added whose state indicates whether or not the other bits are all correct.

Jerry Chow, Manager of Experimental Quantum Computing at IBM Research, told TechCrunch his team is looking for those same bit-flip errors, but also something a bit gnarlier that’s unique to qubits. Given their quantum nature, qubits can be 0 or 1, but the “phase” of the relationship between 0 and 1 can change between negative and positive.

In the system designed at IBM Research, there are two qubits that hold data, and another two “checking” for errors — their state depends on whether or not a qubit has flipped to the wrong value or phase, respectively.

Chow says that this method can scale linearly with the number of qubits in a system, so larger lattices will need more of these measurement bits. But that number won’t grow exponentially with the capability of the system.

So why is handling errors so important for quantum computing? These errors emerge due to interference from factors like heat, electromagnetic radiation and material defects, which are all unfortunately common. If the results from simulations of the interaction of molecules are to be trusted, those using the data need to know there aren’t random errors throughout.

Next up from IBM’s Experimental Quantum Computing team is a similar lattice with 8 qubits. “Thirteen or 17 qubits is the next important milestone,” Chow said, because it’s at that point they’ll have the ability to start encoding logic into the qubits — which is when things start to get really interesting.

Comments

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...

Kiran Upadhyay

Search This Blog