Not to burst your bubble, but that is just the vacuum can on the dilution refrigerator and is a standard piece of hardware you will see in many physics labs. There wasn't really any product design beyond slapping the IBM logo on there.
Of course there was. Deciding what not to add is just as much of a design decision as what to add. I spend no time in physics labs, and like the parent i too find the aesthetic quite striking.
That's a lot of glass for the cleaning crew to wipe down each night. I wonder if it takes special training, or if someone just sticks a "Do not touch" Post-It note to the thing.
> replacing the glass panes with transparent LCDs or LED displays
I guess the CM-1/2/200 machines are the quintessential example of this. The Cray-2's cooling system isn't an active display, but it gets style points too (IMHO).
(But...I've worked in a few places that used glass windows (or other glass surfaces) as whiteboards... That's really what I was thinking of. :-) )
The Cray-2 had some indicator lights on the top of each lobe. I'm not sure how helpful they were to gain an understanding of what the computer was doing. I can't tell how much work my home cluster is doing by looking at the ethernet switch LEDs.
The LCD would nicely replicate the window-as-whiteboard experience though, at the sacrifice of some readability, because the object behind the glass is so interesting.
More seriously though, there won't be a true error corrected quantum computer for a long time. People are hoping that there can be useful applications with imperfect physical qubits.
Isn't that a bit like asking the developers of the Colossus "Does it have enough thyratron ring stores to actually do something useful, or is it just a high-tech piece of boolean operation counting machinery?"
Geez, chop chop, make with the general purpose computer already, Tommy Flowers (or should I say Tommy "spent billions making a useless counting machine" Fraudlowers).
The description talks a lot about commercial uses. Are there problems that the quantum computers of today are actually better at solving than traditional computers? I realize that for many things they're better in a theoretical big-O sense, but does that translate to better wall-clock speed? Presumably you could get a lot of AWS computing for the same cost as one of these.
> Are there problems that the quantum computers of today are actually better at solving than traditional computers?
When the first hard disk (IBM RAMAC) was developed, people drew the same sorts of conclusions. The difference there was that they weren't convinced that the disk would be faster than a secretarial pool. The net was that IBM invented hashing and made it definitively the case that the disk WAS faster.
Hopefully, sixty years later, they are able to address your similar concern in a similar way.
> When the first hard disk (IBM RAMAC) was developed, people drew the same sorts of conclusions. The difference there was that they weren't convinced that the disk would be faster than a secretarial pool. The net was that IBM invented hashing and made it definitively the case that the disk WAS faster.
Source? The impression that I got at the Computer History Museum was that they had specific performance requirements from a customer that they engineered to.
People keep bringing this up. There was at least a theory about what the early computers would be good at that prior methods wouldn't. Then, they hoped they could improve them with research to do more. Even the ENIAC in the 1940's got used as a large calculator for defense applications:
Similarly, you could say what value ARPAnet would provide, disks, email, telephone, and so on. Whereas, using this argument for quantum computers (here) or blockchains (another thread) makes no sense given they aren't doing anything better than existing techniques. They're actually a step back on most metrics. Q is both a research tool and a commercial waste of money until it proves to be better than a classical computer at some practical job. An example where quantum tech was theoretically better from the start was Quantum Key Exchange with modifications on the line detected. Even that goal was easier to solve without quantum methods, though.
I think the idea that a new technology takes work to provide demonstrable value shouldn't be so surprising. That had to happen with RAMAC and may or may not happen here (or with Blockchain, etc.)
Why is this entirely focused on what amounts to case-modding for an alleged supercomputer? Quantum computing advances are presumably not an industrial design challenge...
I kinda want to know what's going through the minds of the engineers pictured. If we could just remove all the marketing BS on that page and just have a 1 pager typed up by them I think we'd have a much better understanding of what this product actually is.
> To design IBM Q System One, IBM assembled a world-class team of industrial designers, architects, and manufacturers
> ...industrial and interior design studios...
> ...manufacturer of high-end museum display cases...
They are absolutely talking about the aesthetic housing design, not the actual quantum engineering designs. About the closest they get in the Design section is talking about it being airtight and accessible for maintenance.
As far as the housing design: The way it is cylindrical, suspended from above and half lit in a dark room instantly made me think of the Poop Machine at MOMA.
> In the second half of 2019, IBM will open the IBM Q Quantum Computation Center, located in Poughkeepsie, New York to expand IBM’s commercial quantum computing program, which already includes systems at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York.
Does this mean, in true IBM fashion, the older, remote one will be terminated?
It looks like they are engineering one of those glass enclosed elevators, common in shopping malls, not a computer. Why the focus on outward appearance without explaining its capabilities?
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[ 7.6 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadThese machines are, like the supercomputers I mentioned, meant to be displayed as a status symbol.
I guess the CM-1/2/200 machines are the quintessential example of this. The Cray-2's cooling system isn't an active display, but it gets style points too (IMHO).
(But...I've worked in a few places that used glass windows (or other glass surfaces) as whiteboards... That's really what I was thinking of. :-) )
The LCD would nicely replicate the window-as-whiteboard experience though, at the sacrifice of some readability, because the object behind the glass is so interesting.
More seriously though, there won't be a true error corrected quantum computer for a long time. People are hoping that there can be useful applications with imperfect physical qubits.
Geez, chop chop, make with the general purpose computer already, Tommy Flowers (or should I say Tommy "spent billions making a useless counting machine" Fraudlowers).
After all, the Colossus was able to aid in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, where existing techniques would have been impractical.
When the first hard disk (IBM RAMAC) was developed, people drew the same sorts of conclusions. The difference there was that they weren't convinced that the disk would be faster than a secretarial pool. The net was that IBM invented hashing and made it definitively the case that the disk WAS faster.
Hopefully, sixty years later, they are able to address your similar concern in a similar way.
Source? The impression that I got at the Computer History Museum was that they had specific performance requirements from a customer that they engineered to.
Don’t have it with me, or I would check for the specific quote.
This has come up previously on HN, and I wrote a few more details back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16274812
(Although still not an exact cite. :-( )
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-eniac-computer-1991...
Similarly, you could say what value ARPAnet would provide, disks, email, telephone, and so on. Whereas, using this argument for quantum computers (here) or blockchains (another thread) makes no sense given they aren't doing anything better than existing techniques. They're actually a step back on most metrics. Q is both a research tool and a commercial waste of money until it proves to be better than a classical computer at some practical job. An example where quantum tech was theoretically better from the start was Quantum Key Exchange with modifications on the line detected. Even that goal was easier to solve without quantum methods, though.
I think the idea that a new technology takes work to provide demonstrable value shouldn't be so surprising. That had to happen with RAMAC and may or may not happen here (or with Blockchain, etc.)
Perhaps not, but getting laypeople to care enough about quantum computing to fund its development could very well be.
How does one interface with it? VT100 terminal?
The design is pretty important for a quantum computer.
> To design IBM Q System One, IBM assembled a world-class team of industrial designers, architects, and manufacturers
> ...industrial and interior design studios...
> ...manufacturer of high-end museum display cases...
They are absolutely talking about the aesthetic housing design, not the actual quantum engineering designs. About the closest they get in the Design section is talking about it being airtight and accessible for maintenance.
Does this mean, in true IBM fashion, the older, remote one will be terminated?
Beginner's guide to working with System Q: https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qx/tutorial?section...