"The Man Who Will Build Google’s Elusive Quantum Computer" (GOOG)
From Wired:
John Martinis is one of the world’s
foremost experts on quantum computing, a growing field of science that
aims to process information at super high speeds using strange physics
of very tiny particles such as electrons and photons. And now, after
years as a physics professor at the University of California Santa
Barbara, he’s headed for Google.
This week, the Google Quantum A.I. Lab announced that it hired
Martinis and his Santa Barbara team to build a new breed of quantum
computing hardware. Though Martinis will maintain his affiliation with
UC Santa Barbara and continue to mentor his PhD students there, he will
spend most of his time on his research at Google. The move proves that
Google is serious about quantum computing, and given the company’s vast
influence and deep pockets, it could provide a serious shot in the arm
for quantum computer research as a whole.
Google launched its Quantum A.I. Lab last year to test a machine called the D-Wave Two, an intriguing but controversial
system that its makers bill as a quantum computer, and it believes
quantum computing could play a key role in so many of its future
ambitions, from self-driving cars and other robots to better predictive
analytics systems for products like Google Now to things we haven’t even
dreamed up yet. Thanks to what’s called the superposition principle of
quantum mechanics, it could process data for such projects at speeds
that are exponentially faster than what you get from today’s machines.
But the scientific community has greeted the D-Wave machine with
skepticism, questioning whether the machine is actually a quantum
computer at all, and whether it can actually provide something you can’t
get from conventional machines. In joining Google, Martinis lends new
weight to the company’s quantum ambitions.
Beyond the D-Wave
Martinis is among those questioning D-Wave’s claims. Last June, Science published a paper
co-authored by Martinis and several other scientists concluding that
D-Wave’s machines aren’t actually faster than normal laptops and
desktops. But he’s no D-Wave hater. Martinis has been working with
D-Wave’s machines for a few years now and says he has long been
impressed with the work the company has done.
The general consensus now, he says, is that the D-Wave computers do
exhibit some quantum behavior. The real question, he explains, is
whether this behavior actually speeds up the D-Wave computers. And
although his team will be working separately from D-Wave at Google, he
thinks their work may eventually help D-Wave take better of advantage of
that quantum behavior. “We’re taking some of the basic ideas of D-Wave
and combining that with what the [Google] Quantum AI team has learned
operating the machine,” he says....MORE
