Tag Archives: quantum computing

Sleeping on the job

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Decorative image onlyAt the end of 2023, following my visit to IBM [see ‘Chirping while calculating probabilities‘ on November 22nd, 2023], I spent a significant amount of time trying to understand quantum computing and exploring its potential applications in my research.  It was really challenging because, as one article I read stated, quantum-mechanical phenomena appear to be weird and the mathematical tools used to model them are complex and abstract.  Just to make it harder you have to learn a new language or at least new terminology and mathematical notation.  I have always found that my unconscious mind is capable of solving mathematical problems given sufficient time and sleep.  However, the mathematics of quantum computing took many nights of unconscious thought to assemble into some sort of understanding and left me with mild headaches.  Around the same time I was reading one of Cormac McCarthy’s new novels, Stella Maris, which consists entirely of a psychologist interviewing a mathematician who is a patient in a hospital. They discuss that mathematical work is performed mostly in the unconscious mind and we have no notion as to how the mind goes about it.  They find it hard to avoid the conclusion that the unconscious mind does not use numbers.  I suspect that it does not use mathematical notation either; perhaps it is more a form of synaesthesia using three-dimensional shapes [see ‘Engineering synaesthesia‘ on September 21st, 2016].  A couple of pages before discussing the unconscious mind’s mathematical work, one of the protagonists comments that ‘If we were constructed with a continual awareness of how we worked we wouldn’t work’.  So, perhaps I should not probe too deeply into how I have acquired a rudimentary understanding of quantum computing.

BTW in case you missed my last post at the start of January [‘600th post and time for a change‘ on January 3rd 2024] and have been wondering what has happened to my weekly post – I have decided to switch to posting monthly on the first Wednesday of each month.

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Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris, Picador, 2022.

Chirping while calculating probabilities

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Decorative image of a pink roseA couple of weeks ago, I visited the London headquarters of IBM in the UK and Ireland for discussions about possible areas of collaboration in research and education.  At the end of our meeting, we were taken to see some of their latest developments, one of which was their Quantum System One computer.  We had seen its casing, a shiny silver cylinder about half metre in diameter and a metre and half long with a hemispherical lower end, hanging in a sealed glass cube in the lobby of the building.  The computer we viewed was also suspended from the ceiling of a sealed glass cube in order to isolate it from vibration, but was without its cylindrical cover so that we could see its innards which need to be cooled to cryogenic temperatures.  The room in which it was displayed was darkened and a soundtrack of the computer operating added to the atmosphere – it sounded like birds chirping.  IBM are already operating quantum computers, starting in 2019 with a 27-qubit processor and achieving 433 qubits last year with plans for 4,158+ qubits in 2025 in their roadmap.  There are about 80 companies focussed on quantum computing worldwide, including Universal Quantum who are working on a million qubit computer.  Qubit is short for quantum bit and is the quantum mechanical analogue of a classical computer bit.  A computer bit works in binary and can only have a value of 0 or 1.  Whereas a qubit holds information about the probability amplitudes for 0 and 1 which will always have a sum of 1.  The use of probability amplitudes allows complex systems to be described more efficiently and larger solution spaces to be explored.  IBM’s quantum processors are thin wafers about the same size as the one in your laptop but their need for cryogenic temperatures and vibration isolation means we will not be using them at home any time soon.