Скачать или смотреть IBM builds world's most sophisticated quantum computer that can handle 50 qubits

IBM, on Friday, announced a significant achievement in quantum computing which is considered to be a vital progress towards a more powerful way of processing information in the near future.

IBM, which is among many other tech giants racing to build practical quantum systems, said it had developed a quantum computer that can handle 50 quantum bits, or qubits. The company also announced the making if a 20-qubit quantum system, which is available through it cloud computing platform.

According to IBM, the first IBM Q systems with a 20-qubit processor will be made accessible online to clients by the end of 2017. The company also said that the new 50-qubit processor is the natural extension of the 20 qubit architecture, and will be made available in the next generation IBM Q systems.

In both 50- and 20-qubit systems, the researchers were able to preserve the quantum state for 90 microseconds. Despite being an extremely short period of time, it's still a new record for the industry as other quantum systems developed so far have comparatively limited capabilities.

IBM 16 Qubit Processor
IBM's 16 Qubit Processor.Creative Commons
Qubits are the basic units in quantum computing that hold bits of information. Unlike traditional computers that store information as either 1 or 0, qubits can be a combination of 0 and 1 at the same time. It's this ability of photons to exist in multiple states at any time that allows quantum computing perform operations much quicker than conventional mac