Google Demonstrates Quantum Computer Image Search 106
An anonymous reader sends along this quote from New Scientist:
"Google's web services may be considered cutting edge, but they run in warehouses filled with conventional computers. Now the search giant has revealed it is investigating the use of quantum computers to run its next generation of faster applications. Writing on Google's research blog this week, Hartmut Neven, head of its image recognition team, reveals that the Californian firm has for three years been quietly developing a quantum computer that can identify particular objects in a database of stills or video (PDF). Google has been doing this, Neven says, with D-Wave, a Canadian firm that has developed an on-chip array of quantum bits — or qubits — encoded in magnetically coupled superconducting loops."
Already Skynet protects itself (Score:5, Interesting)
http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/04/11/map-of-all-google-data-center-locations/ [pingdom.com]
"Google secrecy
Google has made it difficult both to find out where they keep their data centers and how many they have. One big reason for this is that almost all IP addresses that Google uses (and there are a lot of them) are listed to their Mountain View, California address, so just looking at IP addresses (with IP WHOIS or IP-to-location databases) won’t help you figure out where their data centers are or how many they have.
In addition to this, Google usually seeks permits for their data center projects using companies (LLCs) that don’t mention Google at all, for example Lapis LLC in North Carolina and Tetra LLC in Iowa.
Since Google tends to be quite secretive about their data centers in general, the information we have presented here most likely isn’t 100% complete"
Re:Oh no, not D-Wave. (Score:5, Interesting)
Detail Search (Score:3, Interesting)
Quantum Computing Days (Score:3, Interesting)
Hi, there are some excellent introductory lectures as an introduction to quantum computing here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I56UugZ_8DI [youtube.com]
Given by Hartmut Neven with a guest appearance from D-Wave on day 2. Watch all of the them including day 3!
Fascinating topic, though quickly delivered and worth further study and above all experimentation.
It awesome that google supports work like this.
Re:Oh no, not D-Wave. (Score:1, Interesting)
Say good bye to RSA (Score:2, Interesting)
If Google is capable of this what do you think the NSA and friends are capable of?
Re:D-Wave's potential pitfalls (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:D-Wave's potential pitfalls (Score:3, Interesting)
No one, really --- at least, none that I am aware of. Most of the technology is still very much in its infancy, so nobody else is making a big push to turn it into a product yet. Having said that, I suppose it is possible that the NSA has a secret quantum computer and is using it to break our codes even as we speak, though I don't know if that counts as an economic competitor.