A commercially viable quantum computer was unveiled and demonstrated today in Silicon Valley by D-Wave Systems, Inc., a privately-held Canadian firm headquartered near Vancouver.
Quantum computing offers the potential to create value in areas where problems or requirements exceed the capability of digital computing, the company said. But D-Wave explains that its new device is intended as a complement to conventional computers, to augment existing machines and their market, not as a replacement for them.
Company officials formally announced the technology at the Computer History Museum, in the heart of Silicon Valley, in a demonstration intended to show how the machine can run commercial applications and is better suited to the types of problems that have stymied conventional (digital) computers.
Quantum-computer technology can solve what is known as “NP-complete” problems. These are the problems where the sheer volume of complex data and variables prevent digital computers from achieving results in a reasonable amount of time. Such problems are associated with life sciences, biometrics, logistics, parametric database search and quantitative finance, among many other commercial and scientific areas.
Quantum technology delivers precise answers to problems that can only be answered today in general terms. This creates a new and much broader dimension of computer applications,” Martin said.
The idea of a computational device based on quantum mechanics was first explored in the 1970s and early 1980s by physicists and computer scientists such as Charles Bennett of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Paul Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory, David Deutsch of the University of Oxford, and Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology. But to make the technology commercially applicable required the full-scale, full-time business effort of an interdisciplinary team such as that organized by D-Wave Systems.
D-Wave overcame this challenge in part by using the processes and infrastructure associated with the semiconductor industry. This and components such as a new type of analog processor, one that uses quantum mechanics rather than the conventional physics associated with digital processing, to drive the computation.
D-Wave’s approach allows the building of “scalable” processor architectures using available processes and technologies. In addition, its processors are computationally equivalent to more standard devices. Any application developed for one type of quantum computer can be recast as an application for the other.
Observing Quantum Transactions In A Nanotube Excitons are "quasiparticles" created when a photon strikes a semiconductor and excites an electron to a higher energy level. The electron leaves behind a positively charged void called a "hole." That hole pairs with the electron to form the exciton, which takes on a life of its own that ends abruptly when it emits a photon or becomes quenched.
Quantum Bit (qubit) Circuit NEC Corporation, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) have together successfully demonstrated the world's first quantum bit (qubit) circuit that can control the strength of coupling between qubits. Technology achieving control of the coupling strength between qubits is vital to the realization of a practical quantum computer, and has been long awaited in the scientific field.
Spintronics Technology In 1994, Bandyopadhyay and colleagues were the first group to propose the use of spin in classical computing. Then two years later, they were among the first researchers to propose the use of spin in quantum computing. The recent work goes a long way toward implementing some of these ideas.
Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory (xQIT) The new center enables a major new push by MIT theorists in the international race to determine the ultimate capabilities of quantum information systems. Establishing these theoretical capabilities would be a step towards being able to exploit quantum effects for novel applications, including computers, communication networks and global positioning systems.
Designing Quantum Computers As if building a computer out of rubidium atoms and laser beams weren’t difficult enough, scientists sometimes have to work as if blindfolded: The quirks of quantum physics can cause correlations between the atoms to fade from view at crucial times.
Quantum Computing Breakthrough "Our work represents a breakthrough in the search for a nanoscopic [atomic scale] mechanism that could be used for a data readout device," says Christoph Boehme, assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah. "We have demonstrated experimentally that the nuclear spin orientation of phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon can be measured by very subtle electric currents passing through the phosphorus atoms."
Research: Ion Trap Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have designed and built a novel electromagnetic trap for ions that could be easily mass produced to potentially make quantum computers large enough for practical use. The new trap, described in the June 30 issue of Physical Review Letters,* may help scientists surmount what is currently the most significant barrier to building a working quantum computer—scaling up components and processes that have been successfully demonstrated individually.
Information Processing In the drive to understand and harness quantum effects as they relate to information processing, scientists in Waterloo and Massachusetts have benchmarked quantum control methods on a 12-Qubit system. Their research was performed on the largest quantum information processor to date.
A Quantum Computer, One Dot at a Time Quantum computers do not yet exist, but it is known that they can bypass all known encryption schemes used today on the Internet. Quantum computers also are capable of efficiently solving the most important equation in quantum physics: the Schrödinger equation, which describes the time-dependence of quantum mechanical systems. Hence, if quantum computers can be built, they likely will have as large an impact on technology as the transistor.
Better Memory with Quantum Computer Bits Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used charged atoms (ions) to demonstrate a quantum physics version of computer memory lasting longer than 10 seconds—more than 100,000 times longer than in previous experiments on the same ions. The advance improves prospects for making practical, reliable quantum computers (which make use of the properties of quantum systems rather than transistors for performing calculations or storing information). Quantum computers, if they can be built, could break today’s best encryption systems, accelerate database searching, develop novel products such as fraud-proof digital signatures or simulate complex biological systems to help design new drugs.
NASA scientists may have discovered how a warmer climate in the future could increase droughts in certain parts of the world, including the southwest United States.
The researchers compared historical records of the climate impact of changes in the sun's output with model projections of how a warmer climate driven by greenhouse gases would change rainfall patterns. They found that a warmer future climate likely will produce droughts in the same areas as those observed in ancient times, but potentially with greater severity.
Research activities in the field of human robotics are expanding rapidly. The establishment of the JRL (Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory) based in both Japan (Tsukuba) and France (Toulouse-LAAS and Montpellier-LIRMM) contributed strongly to the realization, reinforcement and dynamization of the robotics research community in this field. The two humanoid robots are at the core of JRL's research.
Sir Richard Branson and Al Gore are setting up a new Global science and technology prize – 
Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a new high-performance mirror that could dramatically improve the design and efficiency of the next generation of devices relying upon laser optics, including high-definition DVD players, computer circuits and laser printers.
The new mirror packs the same 99.9 percent reflective punch as current high-grade mirrors, called distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs), but it does so in a package that is at least 20 times thinner, functional in a considerably wider spectrum of light frequencies, and easier to manufacture. All these characteristics present critical advantages for today's ever smaller integrated optical devices.