Friday, May 17, 2013

Google and NASA open quantum computer lab

Google and NASA want smart machines, and they’re willing to explore and entirely different kind of computing to get them there.

This week Google said it’s opening the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. It’s hosted at NASA’s Ames Research center, located down Highway 101 from Google’s Mountain View headquarters and run cooperatively with the Universities Space Research Association, a non-profit group devoted to space science.

A 512-qubit quantum computer called the D-Wave Two will operate in the lab.

Quantum computing might usher in a new era of number crunching, because it uses quantum physics to diverge from the binary computing model. Instead of binary bits, these computers measure qubits, which can simultaneously represent many more values.

“We believe quantum computing may help solve some of the most challenging computer science problems, particularly in machine learning,” wrote Hartmut Neven, a Google director of engineering in a blog post. “Machine learning is all about building better models of the world to make more accurate predictions.”

For more of the Wired story: wired.com/wiredenterprise

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