A few days ago, I blogged about the success of a research team at U.C. Santa Barbara in creating a quantum computing chip using von Neumann architecture – the type used in virtually all computers today. Since then, I’ve had an opportunity to discuss the technology with Dr. Matteo Mariantoni, the first author of the paper describing the architecture, which was recently published in Science.
Von Neumann architecture is at the heart of whatever device you’re reading this article on, be it computer, tablet or phone. (Unless you printed it out, in which case you’re using a much older tech.) In von Neumann infrastructure, the computer is, at its heart, two components – the processor where instructions are performed, and memory, which stores data and programs. And of course, that data is stored as bits, with each bit representing either a zero or a one.
Similarly, a quantum computer is based on qubits, which are also expressed as zero and one. But qubits can also be expressed as superposition states – where the qubit is both zero and one at the same time. Pairs of qubits can also be entangled, which represents mixtures of two states. (See more on entanglement here.)
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