iTnews
  • Home
  • News
  • Technology
  • Oddware

Researchers build quantum fidelity firmware

By Liz Tay on Aug 25, 2010 1:33PM
Researchers build quantum fidelity firmware

Sydney physicist wins part of US military grant.

An international team of physicists has won a US military grant for building firmware to address potential errors in large-scale quantum computers of the future.

The researchers were using a method called dynamical error suppression to reduce the loss of quantum information to environmental noise.

Quantum information loss, or 'decoherence', has been a roadblock in the development of quantum computers that could solve problems far more efficiently than classical computers of today.

Primary investigator Michael J. Biercuk explained that quantum bits (qubits) were particularly susceptible to being corrupted by fluctuations in the environment.

Because they processed information by manipulating qubits, quantum computers were more complex than quantum key distribution networks that used qubits to distribute strings of code.

Decoherence could not be addressed by conventional error-correction techniques, since qubits could not be progressively measured or copied due to the laws of quantum mechanics.

"There are many open questions in the field. No one has built a large-scale quantum computer," said Biercuk, a researcher at the University of Sydney.

"The allowable error rates at a hardware level are very small. You need to have 99.99 percent to 99.9999 percent probability of being in the correct state," he said.

Dynamical error suppression was a non-feedback controller that applied a prescribed sequence of control operations to a qubit to reverse any random changes in its state.

Biercuk highlighted open-loop air-conditioners as another example of non-feedback controllers that would periodically start and stop cooling without measuring the temperature of the room.

"Amazingly, this technique works without requiring any knowledge of what information is encoded in the qubit, or whether environmental noise has disturbed the qubit at all," he said.

"The net result is that at the end of the sequence, any random changes in the qubit state are reversed, and the likelihood of a logical error is reduced."

The project was titled Precision Quantum Control and Error-Suppressing Quantum Firmware for Robust Quantum Computing, and also involved Dartmouth College physicist Lorenza Viola and Harvard University professor Amir Yacoby.

It was this month awarded a three-year, $US1.6m ($1.8m) grant from the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Army Research Office.

Biercuk said quantum computers were of interest to the NSA because of their potential to quickly perform integer factorisation calculations that could render current RSA cryptography obsolete.

The technology could also have commercial applications in areas like facial recognition and image processing. Research efforts were also underway at IBM.

"The kind of quantum computer that we think about when we talk about a factoring engine is likely 30 to 50 years away, but it's such a big deal that people are trying to get there rapidly," he said.

"The truth is, we only have a couple ideas about what quantum computing is really good for - one of them is factorisation. The other is unstructured search: the idea that you have a large database and want to find a target solution but don't know how this database is structured."

Biercuk, who was educated in the US, said his move to the University of Sydney this year was "a vote of confidence in what [research and development] goes on in Australia".

"The nation has a very strong and long history of contributing to the field," he said. "The Australian Government has not only invested a lot in the field; they've invested consistently in the field."

Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here.
Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.
Tags:
erroroddwarequantumqubitresearchscitechusyd

Partner Content

Why Genworth Australia embraced low-code software development
Promoted Content Why Genworth Australia embraced low-code software development
The Great Resignation has intensified insider security threats
Promoted Content The Great Resignation has intensified insider security threats
Avoiding CAPEX by making on-premise IT more cloud-like
Promoted Content Avoiding CAPEX by making on-premise IT more cloud-like
Security: Understanding the fundamentals of governance, risk & compliance
Promoted Content Security: Understanding the fundamentals of governance, risk & compliance

Sponsored Whitepapers

Extracting the value of data using Unified Observability
Extracting the value of data using Unified Observability
Planning before the breach: You can’t protect what you can’t see
Planning before the breach: You can’t protect what you can’t see
Beyond FTP: Securing and Managing File Transfers
Beyond FTP: Securing and Managing File Transfers
NextGen Security Operations: A Roadmap for the Future
NextGen Security Operations: A Roadmap for the Future
Video: Watch Juniper talk about its Aston Martin partnership
Video: Watch Juniper talk about its Aston Martin partnership

Events

  • Micro Focus Information Management & Governance (IM&G) Forum 2022
  • CRN Channel Meets: CyberSecurity Live Event
  • IoT Insights: Secure By Design for manufacturing
  • Cyber Security for Government Summit
  • Forrester Technology & Innovation Asia Pacific 2022
By Liz Tay
Aug 25 2010
1:33PM
0 Comments

Related Articles

  • Labor promises $3m for quantum technology PhDs
  • Sydney quantum computing startup splits into two companies
  • HPC and research infrastructure need reworking, says new roadmap
  • UTS to create secure research hub at Tech Central
Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on Whatsapp Email A Friend

Most Read Articles

Qantas calls time on IBM, Fujitsu in tech modernisation

Qantas calls time on IBM, Fujitsu in tech modernisation

Researchers hacked Oracle servers to demo serious vulnerability

Researchers hacked Oracle servers to demo serious vulnerability

PayTo rollout kicks off

PayTo rollout kicks off

Australian scientists build world's first quantum computer IC

Australian scientists build world's first quantum computer IC

Digital Nation

IBM global chief data officer on the rise of the number crunchers
IBM global chief data officer on the rise of the number crunchers
COVER STORY: Operationalising net zero through the power of IoT
COVER STORY: Operationalising net zero through the power of IoT
The security threat of quantum computing
The security threat of quantum computing
Integrity, ethics and board decisions in the digital age
Integrity, ethics and board decisions in the digital age
Crypto experts optimistic about future of Bitcoin: Block
Crypto experts optimistic about future of Bitcoin: Block
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in any form without prior authorisation.
Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of nextmedia's Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.