Quantum Experiment Brings Us Closer To Super-Fast Computers
Computing a Fourier transform isn’t so hard. You know, that common calculation that uses spectral analysis and data compression. But just try doing it with an iodine molecule. Japanese scientists did, of course, and succeeded.
A Single Molecule Computes Thousands of Times Faster than Your PC
A demo of a quantum calculation carried out by Japanese researchers has yielded some pretty mind-blowing results: a single molecule can perform a complex calculation thousands of times faster than a conventional computer.A proof-of-principle test run of a discrete Fourier transform -- a common calculation using spectral analysis and data compression, among other things -- performed with a single iodine molecule transpired very well, putting all the molecules in your PC to shame.
Ultrafast computing with molecules
A Viewpoint on:
Ultrafast Fourier Transform with a Femtosecond-Laser-Driven MoleculeKouichi Hosaka, Hiroyuki Shimada, Hisashi Chiba, Hiroyuki Katsuki, Yoshiaki Teranishi, Yukiyoshi Ohtsuki, and Kenji Ohmori
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 180501 (2010) – Published May 03, 2010
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[...] Writing in Physical Review Letters, Kouichi Hosaka [3] and collaborators from several institutions in Japan illustrate how quantum interference may be used to execute a common classical algorithm very rapidly—within a few tens of femtoseconds. Hosaka et al. demonstrate that the dynamics associated with the vibrations of the atoms in a molecule can be used to implement a Fourier transform. The rapidity of the molecular oscillations means that this protocol can be executed very quickly—much quicker, as the authors point out, than any conceivable device based on conventional electronics.
The authors point out the important feature that the molecular motion executes the Fourier transform in a mere 145 fs. This is several orders of magnitude faster than devices based on silicon electronics are likely to be able to achieve. This observation provokes an enticing proposition—the idea of high-speed, nondissipative logic operations and algorithms would make for a revolution in physical instantiations of computational devices.
However, there are a number of important barriers that will need to be overcome if such devices are to displace current high-speed electronics.
[...]
Nonetheless, the notion of a classical processor with such a dramatic speed-up suggests that it is worth continuing to explore new ways to use physical systems to encode and manipulate information, and that this connection may reveal new insights into both physics and into information processing.
Collected from: Physics - Ultrafast computing with molecules
Sources:
- Quantum Experiment Brings Us Closer To Super-Fast Computers | Motherboard
- A Single Molecule Computes Thousands of Times Faster than Your PC | Popular Science
- Physics - Ultrafast computing with molecules
- PhysRevLett.104.180501.pdf
- Molecular computations: Single molecule can calculate thousands of times faster than a PC
- Ultrafast Fourier Transform with a Femtosecond-Laser-Driven Molecule
- Oxford Physics - A & L - Ian Walmsley
- Slashdot Hardware Story | 1 Molecule Computes Thousands of Times Faster Than a PC
