
IBM Building First Universal Quantum Computers for Business and Science - socialjulio
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/51740.wss
======
moab
Marketing at IBM should read up before writing illuminating sentences like
"...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."

Necessary reading (read by my high-school age cousins, so your marketers
should be able to grok it)
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Com...](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Computers.pdf)

~~~
RobertoG
I think this is one of those cases where the inverse Hanlon's Razor applies:

"Avoid attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice"

~~~
Chyzwar
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

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kriro
Hanhee Paik has (co-)published the following papers in 2016:

* Experimental Demonstration of a Resonator-Induced Phase Gate in a Multiqubit Circuit-QED System

* System and method for quantum information transfer between optical photons and superconductive qubits

* Rapid Driven Reset of a Qubit Readout Resonator

* Characterization of the resonator induced phase gate

* Demonstrating Multi-Qubit Operations in a Superconducting 3D circuit QED Architecture

Patents: Cavity filtered qubit

Source:
[https://scholar.google.de/citations?hl=de&user=lHEtpUUAAAAJ&...](https://scholar.google.de/citations?hl=de&user=lHEtpUUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate)

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wzeng
This is great! There's a really cool ecosystem of Python tools for quantum
computers that's coming out. Check them out if you'd like to learn more about
quantum programming:

IBM's API: [https://github.com/IBM/qiskit-sdk-
py](https://github.com/IBM/qiskit-sdk-py)

Rigetti Computing's Forest:
[http://forest.rigetti.com/](http://forest.rigetti.com/)
[https://github.com/rigetticomputing/pyquil](https://github.com/rigetticomputing/pyquil)

ProjectQ: [http://projectq.ch/](http://projectq.ch/)

We added a really basic introduction to quantum programming into Forest that
you might enjoy:
[http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro_to_qc.html](http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro_to_qc.html)

------
6nf
Fluff piece. There's no indication that they know how to build a real QC.

~~~
rspeer
The part that made me certain this is more a marketing effort than a technical
effort is when they described it as a followup to "Watson" and "blockchain".

"Watson" is currently a brand name for a bunch of miscellaneous NLP
consulting, capitalizing on a fact that they made a very specific NLP system
for answering Jeopardy questions that won on Jeopardy. The fact that the name
is famous, but businesses are not actually looking to answer trivia questions,
has required some marketing contortions.

"Blockchain" is, for one thing, a bunch of neat mathematics. It's also an
enterprise fad that involves ignoring the neat mathematics. The logic for the
fad is something like this: Bitcoin made a ton of money by decentralizing
money, evading currency controls, wasting power, and selling drugs. We want to
make a ton of money too! We'd rather not decentralize anything, piss off
governments, increase our electric bill, or sell drugs, but maybe there's
something else in there that makes money. Whatever that is, let's call it
"blockchain".

I don't see a coherent category that includes Watson, blockchain, and quantum,
as the author of this press release believes exists. But if I had to
extrapolate:

IBM will provide an API for running a vaguely-related set of algorithms. The
entire API will actually run on classical computers, but some of it will
involve quantum simulators. They will leverage the confusion about where the
quantum part is to sell consulting to companies where a manager has put the
cart before the horse and decided they need some quantum _right now_.

~~~
kitd
Bitcoin is based on a blockchain process, but other applications could be as
well. Blockchain exists as a separate concept. Not unreasonable to expect
companies to commercialise it.

~~~
rspeer
Sure, but when you take out all the parts they don't want, what they want to
commercialize is "a database".

~~~
ebuchman
The focus is more on commercializing multi-stake-holder database replication,
which is a more complicated problem than just "database" or "database
replication", and is where Byzantine fault tolerant solutions apply. Hash-
linked chain of blocks is just an optimization in that design space.

------
Gupie
This is in the first paragraph:

"Quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns
cannot be seen because the data doesn’t exist ..."

It then goes on the say:

" and the possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too
enormous to ever be processed by classical computers"

I can understand how the second statement could be true but the first! Can
someone explain how the first statement could be correct, or is the guy who
wrote the sentence talking nonsense? How can you find patterns in data that
you do not have?

~~~
petters
The second statement is misleading at best. It suggests that QCs are some sort
of parallel/faster classical computers.

~~~
akvadrako
That is (roughly) one way to look at it and actually the interpretation that
David Deutsch thought brought the most clarity. He was the first to describe a
quantum Turing machine.

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nagyf
How is it possible, that IBM wants to build a commercial quantum computer with
50 qubits in a _few years_, while there is a Canadian company that just
released a 2048 qubit commercial quantum computer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems)

I'm not an expert, please someone explain me. Is IBM's stuff is different
somehow?

~~~
bdav
D-Wave is not an _universal_ quantum computer. It only performs quantum
annealing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing)

IMB's computer should be able to execute quantum algorithms such as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm)
to break RSA

~~~
nagyf
Thanks for clarifying, I understand now.

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et1975
There's also MSR Liqui|> that lets you program simulations in F#
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/language-
in...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/language-integrated-
quantum-operations-liqui)

------
mtgx
Recent story: Google plans to commercialize quantum technologies in 5 years:

[http://www.nature.com/news/commercialize-quantum-
technologie...](http://www.nature.com/news/commercialize-quantum-technologies-
in-five-years-1.21583)

------
partycoder
My limited understanding of quantum computers is that they excel at solving
optimization problems, as well as problems such as integer factorization (e.g:
Shor's algorithm), which is the basis for many cryptographic systems.

Now, in practice, the largest number factored using a quantum computer is very
small (56,153), which is minuscule compared to the large numbers used by some
standards (such as the controversial p and q numbers from Dual_EC_DRBG
provided by NIST).

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DeepYogurt
This seems to be the programming reference
[https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qstage/#/tutorial?s...](https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qstage/#/tutorial?sectionId=75a85f7e14ae3fd4329ad5c3e59466ea&pageIndex=3)
You need an account to use the editor.

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tbrowbdidnso
Can somebody tell me something cool IBM actually does for real besides run
softlayer?

I'm so tired of endless waves of marketing bullshit with no substance. At
least when most companies announce something it's a tangible product I can
actually expect to use at a non ambiguous point in the future

~~~
pyromine
Ever heard the phrase "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM"?

IBM is massive in IT consulting with basically half their revenue coming from
the consulting side of their business, and the rest they're a service company
in a lot of different IT verticals.

A somewhat informative quora link, because if you were too lazy to even google
this you probably won't dig deeper than this: [https://www.quora.com/What-
does-IBM-do](https://www.quora.com/What-does-IBM-do)

~~~
tbrowbdidnso
Does that change anything I said? All this marketing doesn't seem to lead to
anything tangible unlike similar releases from other big companies. It's just
fluff.

I'm aware the IBM does consulting and that's possibly the most boring software
realm there is.

~~~
TuringNYC
It might be boring, but it is revenue. Secondly, we should all be happy that
companies like IBM (and of course Google, Facebook, Microsoft) are taking a
long view and investing into cool ideas which may not necessarily immediately
result in something tangible. The quarter-to-quarter view taken by most public
companies is not optimal for society.

BTW, I work in ML+Medicine and IBM has dont great work in the area, with some
Production implementations at hospitals.

------
HeavenBanned
Does this mean programming paradigms will be changed? Will I have to learn a
new language that's oriented towards Quantum Computing? Or is this something
the computer handles regardless of the higher-level language?

~~~
douche
Probably not, because 10-1 this is another IBM vaporware announcement that
will never amount to anything.

