Puzzle Series: What is this, or what do you want it to be?
(Since I am in non stop meetings offsite, I will try to wait a full turn of 24 hours before recognizing the winner… so if you feel like you’ve got it, try to identify what’s new and different about this one)
I will pass as I am stumped. I love the fly-strip comment as this is one funny image. Good to keep the 24 hour waiting time, always.
I think this shows an assembly of a CRT and its controls, seen from the back side. The aluminum bar stock and the uneven coil makes me suspect the device got hand-built.
hmm, well it’s directional, and points away from you, not sure why the cables are in copper tubes
Steve,
I am thinking this is the new version of the dWave quantum computer. Rationale: this equipment seems VERY similar to what we saw in their original presentation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cstudio/391701536/in/set-7215759453...
and the pullback shot from outside:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cstudio/391701513/
Yes, after a little more homework I find myself in agreement with The Rocketeer – the Rainer processor is my bet too. The hardware to support the 128qbit (vice 24qbit) still show its roots from the old Leda housing but I’m still puzzled by the greatly reduced size; are they using a different cooling system here? Is the redesign a lot smaller to avoid detector noise/crosstalk? Is this picture showing just part of the whole assembly? Inquiring minds are dying to know!
Bingo Rocketeer! and within the first half hour of the post no less. The community agrees. And when I added to the caption to ask for more details, he nailed that too! This is indeed the latest quantum computer from the Canadians at D-Wave Systems.
Yes, Schoschie, it is supercooled to 500x colder than the coldest place in outer space, and then it engages the computational resources of parallel universes.
Steelhive’s fly strip is nicely symbolic of the debugging effort. =)
And a special bonus to Tamooj, who added some insightful research. You were spot on about what makes this new and shiny. At the heart is the 128 qubit “Rainier” chip with a new I/O approach to allow for sub-linear scaling of external wires as the number of qubits grows to the thousands. The layers going to the top demark different temperature regimes when this gets inserted into the refrigerator (and yes, it has a new cooling system). The whole contraption rests inside an RF shielded room that looks a bit like a meat locker.
And, what I have affectionately called Rose’s Law seems to be on track. There appears to be a Moore’s Law-like doubling in the number of solid state entangled qubits each year. It is early still, like when Moore made his first observation in 1965, and so I’m sure there will be some retrospective rationalization to fit the data. Geordie Rose demonstrated a 16 qubit computer in February 2007, 28 qubits in November 2007, and so a demo of 128 qubits by Feb 2010 would be spot on…
For a tech dive, Rose Blog covers the chip architecture.
I first became interested in quantum computing when I read Oxford Professor David Deutsch’s Fabric of Reality: "quantum computers can efficiently render every physically possible quantum environment, even when vast numbers of universes are interacting. Quantum computers can also efficiently solve certain mathematical problems, such as factorization, which are classically intractable, and can implement types of cryptography which are classically impossible. Quantum computation is a qualitatively new way of harnessing nature." (p.221)
Or from my first blog on the subject: “Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.”
Cool puzzle indeed Steve. Thanks for all the links and infos too.
Here is one for you ; )
are there any papers on the physical design? I’d like to know, if there is any basis for the rectangular piece at the bottom?
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