IBM Opens its Experimental Quantum Computer to the Public
Quantum computing should bring radical changes to the way computers are built and work in the years to come by, opening up a whole new world of possibilities. With the technology still in its very early stages, Quantum computing has typically been the domain of academics, researchers and organizations like Google, Lockheed Martin and NASA.
However IBM wants this to change. The company has just unveiled an online simulator that lets anyone run quantum experiments on its five-qubit quantum computer located at a research lab in Yorktown Heights. The online service will offer online tutorials to help people and companies understand how quantum systems work along with visual simulations of quantum computing.
The system also gives access to the actual quantum computer for users who want to have their tests processed.
IBM hopes the service will lead to more interest in the field and pave the way for future developments."It’s meant to be educational, but also to be the beginnings of a larger framework," IBM Quantum Computing Group manager Jerry Chow told The New York Times.
Computers of today store data in a transistor, which can hold a single bit in the form of a 1 or 0. Quantum computing instead takes advantage of a mechanic called superpositioning that allows a single quantum bit -- or qubit -- to store a 1 or 0 or both at the same time. The result, at least in theory, are exponentially more powerful computers than current devices, which can be used to run complex simulations on anything from understanding DNA sequences to advanced machine learning.