New paper suggests quantum computers will address problems that could have substantial scientific and economic impact With rapid recent advances in quantum technology, we have drawn ever closer to the threshold of quantum devices whose computational powers can exceed those of classical supercomputers. But when…
By Judith Bishop, Director of Computer Science, Microsoft Research Throughout his life, Albert Einstein, who pioneered the theory of relativity, was skeptical about quantum computing. He was of the opinion that the quantum mechanical theory was incomplete, and was “spooky action at a distance.” How…
Posted by Jeannette M. Wing The Internet, global positioning systems, the laser, multi-touch displays and search engines. What do these have in common? These technologies, which we take for granted today, came out of basic scientific research. Basic research creates knowledge. It advances our fundamental…
Quantum computing has the potential to utterly overturn what it means to compute. At Microsoft, we have been studying quantum computation since the late nineties with an eye towards a scalable universal quantum computer. Quantum computers compute in a massively parallel fashion with computing power…
Posted by Rob Knies For years now, Microsoft researchers have been working with academics and scientists to unlock the riddles of quantum computing, a field that aims to merge the mysterious properties of quantum mechanics with computing. If achieved, a scalable quantum computer could rapidly…
Posted by Jennifer Warnick Station Q, headquarters of potentially world-changing quantum-computing research, is located just past where the Pacific Ocean meets the sand, up through a grove of palm trees and across a bike path. (Do mind the shirtless college student zipping past on a…
Tweet Posted by Rob Knies Phase transitions. Statistical physics. Probability theory.To many of us, such concepts are simply beyond our grasp, accessible, if at all, only as something relating, in some vague, hazy fashion, to issues mathematical or topics scientific. Such fields, if they…
Computing has changed the world—from online shopping, to social media, to big data analyses of, well, just about everything. The rate of computing-driven change continues unabated, and we find ourselves wondering: what are the hot trends and burning issues in computer science research today? On…
Posted by Michael Freedman, managing director of Station Q Station Q focuses on the physics of those condensed-matter quantum systems that offer the promise of intrinsic or “topological” protection from error and decoherence. Such systems are likely to play an important role in the…
