QUANTUM COMPUTERS ARE HERE

The quantum computer is here.  Transition:

• The earliest intelligent life might have used fingers to compute.
• The Lebombo bone, dating back 35,000 BC, had 29 distinct notches.

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  The Sumerian abacus appeared around 2500 BC.  China only used this device around the year zero.
• Several analog computers go back to around 150 BC in Greece with the astrolabe.
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  In 1206 came the first programmable computer, a clock.
• Soon thereafter, the equatorium.  Here is one by Johannes Schoner in the 16th century.
• The slide rule was invented around 1620 in England.
• Germany designed the first calculating machine in 1623.
• In 1645 Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculator.
• Gottfried von Leibniz dabbled with a binary numeral system around 1675, the means by which all modern computers now work.

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  In 1822 Charles Babbage's machines used the decimal system, and so did ENIAC in 1945.
• When I taught computer programming half a century ago, I used punched cards, something invented in 1804 by French weaver Joseph Jacquard.

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  American Herman Hollerith invented data storage on punch cards that could be read by a machine in the late 1880s.
• Englishman Charles Babbage also originated the concept of a programmable computer around 1833, leading to a programmable mechanical computer described by Irishman Percy Ludgate in 1909.

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  A number of companies sold desktop mechanical calculators from 1930.
• Alan Turing first described the digital paper in 1936

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  Vannevar Bush discussed in 1936 what became the IBM punch card machine, and helped get ENIAC going.  He also was most influential in starting the Manhattan Project and the National Science Foundation.

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  In 1940 Arthur Dickinson of IBM invented the first digital electronic computer.
• Austrian inventor Curt Herzstark introduced the Curta in 1948, the size of a grenade.
• In 1961 came the first all-electronic desktop calculator.
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  Remington Rand built UNIVAC in 1951, the first mass produced computer, eventually selling 46 of them for what today would have been $10.4 million each.  Used 5200 vacuum tubes and consumed 125 kW of power.  The average home today uses almost 10 times that rate.
• Here is something interesting:  RR was acquired by Sperry in 1955, and merged in 1986 with Burroughs to form Unisys.

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  IBM in 1954 built smaller computers, with the 650 "only" weighing 2000 pounds at a price of $500,000, or could be leased for $3500/month (today that would be $40,000/month).  UNIVAC...16,000 pounds.

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  The bipolar transistor was invented in 1947, and from 1955 replaced vacuum tubes, with  a power consumption 150 watts.
• Supercomputing came in the early 1960s, with the first prototype in the UK using germanium transistors.The CDC 6600 in 1964 is considered to be the first supercomputer, and remained the fastest into 1969.

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  Olivetti built the first personal computer in 1975.  Weighed 88 pounds.
• Over almost the next half century, Microsoft formed in 1975, Apple was founded in 1976, with the iPhone coming in 2007, Linux operating systems in 1991, Facebook in 2004, Samsung Mobile released the first Android-powered device in 2009, and you can almost say nothing much has changed since then.
• Quantum computers, first reported in 2017, will change the future of computing.

So about the quantum computer:

• A bit is a binary digit, which has one of two values, 0 or 1.
• Quantum computers operate on quantum bits, or qubits.  Almost the same as bits, for a qubit can be 1 or 0 or a superposition of both, called the quantum state.  Just this difference creates this huge difference.
• But qubits are still fragile, bothered by background noise, like vibrations, temperatures changes and electromagnetic fields.
• In 2019 Google completed a benchmark test on a 53-qubit quantum computer, which would have taken a classical computer anywhere from a few days to 10,000 years.
• A plan is to link the military and 17 national laboratories in a quantum communications network.
• While the field is still in the world of simulation, you can today buy one.

How today are quantum computers?

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  Oh, in 2011 it was reported that the world's first commercially available computer was sold for $10 million by D-Wave One to Lockheed Martin.
• Want one for yourself?  Chinese company SpinQ will sell you a 2-qubit system for $8700 to the right with a power rating of 60 W.

If you have the time and interest, read in a recent issue of Time magazine:  Quantum Computers Could Solve Countless of Problems---And Create a Lot of New Ones.  I'll summarize:

• The global quantum-computing industry is projected to grow from $412 million in 2020 to $8.6 billion in 2027
• Complex problems that currently take the most powerful supercomputer several years could potentially be solved in seconds.
• This problem-solving ability will make military defenses obsolete.
• This the new space race.
• The competitors are China and USA.

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  A long time ago I speculated that the future was a molecular computer.  Didn't know what I was saying.
• A bio computer uses DNA and molecular biology, or bio-molecules as a support for computations.
• Thus quantum computers are different from bio computers.
• There is still some intrigue here, for future computers could run on human brain cells.

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  The company that has emerged, after a long period of relative mediocrity, is IBM.  They are the world leader in quantum computing.  Of course, Google might well object.  Here is a list, though, that shows IBM as #1.
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  IBM last year unveiled a 433-qubit Osprey chip, the world's most powerful quantum processor
• Will launch a 1,121-qubit processor this year, and something surpassing 4,000 qubits by 2025.
• 17 countries have national quantum strategies, and China's 5-Year Plan makes Quantum a policy priority.

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  But former Pentagon Chief Data Officer David Spirk, when he left his post last year, warned:  I don't think that there are enough senior leaders getting their heads around the implication of quantum...  I think that's a new of computer that, when it arrives, is going to be a pretty shocking moment to industry and government alike.

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  The world spent $30 billion on quantum in 2022, with China accounting for roughly half, and the EU almost a quarter.  The USA?  Only $1.2 billion.  Says Spirk, that's trivial.  This is not a coming wave, it's here.

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  American officials are concerned, and envision a $1 trillion cybersecurity upgrade.
• Worried about hackers today?  Quantum computing will make them deadly.
• Want to read more?  Get Michio Kaku's latest (available in May of this year):  Quantum Supremacy:  How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything.
• Quantum supremacy can lead to a utopian society, or bring catastrophic damage.  Sort of like Artificial Intelligence.  In fact, that Google company leading their QC charge is called Google Quantum AI.

Sorry, but this shows how slow you are to keep up.  That talk came in 2019.  But not to fret.  Unless you were a student or faculty member, you probably would not have been able to attend.

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