Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - 8

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

COVER STORY

How quantum
computing works
T

oday's conventional digital computers
are limited by their inability to process
data that isn't broken down into binary
language. A circuit will store an information "bit" by either applying a charge to
a transistor or not, read by the machine
as a one or a zero. Continual advances
in photolithography, the technology behind printing circuits on semiconductor
wafers, has allowed computing power
to double every few years, something
known as Moore's Law.

year. It may not sound like much, but a
quantum mechanical principle allows each
qubit to store information as both a one
and a zero simultaneously. "Thanks to this
effect known as superpositioning, with
just 250 qubits you could store more bits
of information than there are atoms in the
universe," said IBM researcher Winfried
Wilcke, who is the company's senior manager for nanoscale science and technology. "That is the enormous potential of a
quantum computer."

Now billions of transistors only a
few nanometers in length can be
packed onto one chip, but experts believe the industry may only be years
away from hitting a wall. "Shrink
them any further, to the size of a few
atoms perhaps, and they could begin exhibiting quantum mechanical properties
of their own," warned Ford's expert in the
field, Joydip Ghosh.

But this is only one part of the equation. Physicists have discovered that
pairs of particles can be "entangled,"
influencing each other even over vast
distances. This same phenomenon can
be applied to a qubit chip, forming
the basis for researchers to track interactions between correlated inputs,
regardless of whether these variables
represent cars in a fleet or electrons in
a lithium atom.

Moreover, digital computers are designed
to evaluate each possible outcome individually one after the other until all calculations are completed with total certainty. This can take so long that by the
time they are done, the data is already
worthless, as in the case of traffic. The
advent of multicore chips allows for some
operations to be performed at the same
time but in isolation from one another,
which limits their usefulness.

"Entanglement is the quantum mechanical engine that drives a machine's
parallel computing -- only then can the
exponential power of the qubit truly be
harnessed," Ford's Ghosh said.

Technical challenges

Enter renowned physicist Richard Feynman, who in 1982 first proposed the idea
of building a computer with an ability
to overlap multiple calculations at once
where variables are evaluated as part of
an interconnected system in constant flux.

While the world has eventually caught
up with Feynman's idea, there are considerable technical challenges to be
overcome. In order to mimic the superpositioned state of both one and
zero, qubits are often made from loops
of superconducting metal like niobium
that allow a current to be applied in
two opposite directions. The metal has
to be cold before all electrical resistance is eliminated. Very cold.

It has taken decades but Google claims
its Bristlecone chip features 72 quantum
bits or "qubits," while smaller rival Rigetti
plans to deploy a 128-qubit system this

Dozens of cryogenic tubes deep freeze
the circuits before a liquefied helium
isotope lowers the temperature further
to almost -273 degrees Celsius. To put

Constant flux

8

www.autonewseurope.com

that in perspective, more warmth has
been detected in the far reaches of
deep space. "Inside a quantum computer is probably the coldest point in
the measured universe," said former
D-Wave boss Bo Ewald.
That's not all, though. The qubits must also
be placed in a vacuum to minimize any and
all environmental influences as much as
possible. Since cosmic rays can already
induce memory errors in conventional
computers, layer upon layer of steel-cage
shielding isolates the qubits - even from
the effects of earth's own magnetic field.
"Think of it as a series of Russian dolls protecting something that looks like the arm
of a Terminator at the center," Ewald said.
Nevertheless, the slightest interference
can disrupt this delicate quantum state
known as coherence and invalidate the
results, so the longer they run, the more
unreliable the data can become.
A top priority for tech companies building these machines is improving error detection and correction rates, a problem
largely solved for their digital cousins.
IBM's Wilcke is confident progress will
continue to advance in prolonging system
stability, and with it the integrity of the
data: "Whereas coherence once lasted
only nanoseconds, over time we've been
able to extend this to microseconds. It's
the new Moore's Law."
IBM is now researching a new form of qubit as part of a three-year contract with
the U.S. Defense Department's advanced
research division, DARPA. Governments
are interested in part due to the risk
these computers pose to cybersecurity.
Scientists predict they will soon be fast
enough to crack the world's most sophisticated encryption algorithms.
-- Christiaan Hetzner

MAY 2019


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Automotive News Europe - May 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Europe - May 2019

Contents
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - Intro
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - Cover1
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - Cover2
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - 3
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - Contents
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - 5
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - 6
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - 7
Automotive News Europe - May 2019 - 8
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