Canada-based startup D-Wave says it has already has done it. Its chief executive, Vern Brownell, told me in an email that D-Wave Systems has created the first scalable quantum computer, with proven entanglement, and is now working on producing the best results possible for increasingly complex problems. He qualified this claim by stressing that their approach, called “adiabatic computing,” may not be able to solve every problem but has a broad variety of uses in optimizing computations; sampling; machine learning; and constraint satisfaction for commerce, national defense, and science.
He said that D-Wave is complementary to digital computers; a special-purpose computing resource designed for certain classes of problems.
The D-Wave Two computer has 512 qubits and can, in theory, perform 2^512 operations simultaneously. That’s more calculations than there are atoms in the universe — by many orders of magnitude. Brownell said the company will soon be releasing a quantum processor with more than 1,000 qubits. He said that his computer won’t run Shor’s algorithm, an algorithm necessary for cryptography, but it has potential uses in image detection, logistics, protein mapping and folding, Monte Carlo simulations and financial modeling, oil exploration, and finding exoplanets.
D-Waveの2台のコンピュータは512キュービットを有し、理論上、2^512の処理を同時に実行可能である。この計算回数は全地球上の原子の数よりも何桁も多い回数である。D-Wave社は1000キュービットを超える量子プロセッサを近いうちにリリース予定だとBrownell氏は言う。彼曰く、D-Waveのコンピュータはショア・アルゴリズム、暗号計算アルゴリズムの実行ではなく、画像検出、物流、タンパク質の折り畳み現象シュミレーション、モンテカルロシュミレーションや金融モデリング、石油探査や太陽系外惑星探査などでの適用を念頭においているとのこと。
D-Waveの２つのコンピュータは512のキュービットを持ち理論上では2の512乗の数の動作を同時に行える。それは宇宙に存在する原子よりも何桁も多い見積もりである。Brownellはその会社は近いうちに1000を超えるキュービットを持つ量子プロセッサを公開するだろうと語った。彼は彼のコンピュータは暗号化に必要なShorの演算方式は実行しないが、画像検出、ロジスティクス（記号論理学）、タンパク質のマッピングとフォールディング、Monte Carloシミュレーションズ、ファイナンシャル・モデリング、石油探査、そして系外惑星の発見の分野での使用が見込めると述べた。
So quantum computers are already here in a limited form, and fully functional versions are on the way. They will be as transformative for mankind as were the mainframe computers, personal computers, and smartphones that we all use.
As do all advancing technologies, they will also create new nightmares. The most worrisome development will be in cryptography. Developing new standards for protecting data won’t be easy. The RSA standards that are in common use each took five years to develop. Ralph Merkle, a pioneer of public-key cryptography, points out that the technology of public-key systems, because it is less well-known, will take longer to update than these — optimistically, 10 years. And then there is a matter of implementation so that computer systems worldwide are protected.
Without a particular sense of urgency or shortcuts, Merkle says, it could easily be 20 years before we’ve replaced all of the Internet’s present security-critical infrastructure.
It is past time we began preparing for the spooky technology future we are rapidly heading into.
Vivek Wadhwa is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, and distinguished fellow at Singularity University. His past appointments include Harvard Law School, University of California Berkeley, and Emory University.
進行が急速に進む将来技術に対する備えを始めるのに一刻の猶予もありません。
Vivek Wadhwa氏はStanford大学Rock Center for Corporate Governanceのフェロー兼Duke大学Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercializationのリサーチ・ディレクター兼Sigularity大学のディスティングイッシュトフェローである。前職では、Wadhwa氏はHarvard Law School、University of California Berkeley、そしてEmory Universityの教授職を歴任している。
それは私たちが急速に進んでいたオカルトティックな技術が存在する未来のための準備を始めた過去の時代である。
Vivek WadhwaはStandard UniversityのRock Center for Corporate Governanceに所属する特別研究員であり、同時にDukeにあるCenter for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercializationの研究局長であり、さらにSingularity Universityの優れた研究員である。彼は過去にHarvard Law University, University of California Berkeley,そしてEmory Universityに在籍していた。
