Intel ships mystery quantum hardware to national lab

Intel sees quantum computing as the next step beyond today's CPUs and GPUs, and this week took a step ahead in delivering such a system. The chipmaker is sending quantum computing equipment to the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) where it will slot into a real-world quantum system being built at ANL …

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

It's not clear what the equipment is,

or isn't

[bazza]

Re: It's not clear what the equipment is,

Nor is it certain that it will be delivered. They'd have to open it to see, but beware of the angry cat stuck inside

[bazza]

Re: It's not clear what the equipment is,

(though the cat may or may not be there either, but regardless it will be angry)

[Marco van Beek]

Re: It's not clear what the equipment is,

Brings a whole new meaning to “dead on arrival”. “But that’s what you ordered, sir…”.

I wonder you place the order after it arrives…

[TimMaher]

Re: after it arrives

Old joke:-

“Neutrino!”

“Knock, knock!”

“Who’s there?”

[breakfast]

Going to be hard to track that delivery

They'll be able to tell where the delivery truck is or how quickly it is going, but not both.

[John Brown (no body)]

Why are quantum computers so big...

...when quantum particles are so small?

And how big is the FBI one at Quantico? How many Quantum computer builders are pissed that that name is already taken?

[ecofeco]

But... why?

Why connect x86 architecture, with all of its failures and warts, at all?

FFS.

[Tempest8008]

Facilitate collaboration?

I love this part:

"Researchers have complained Uncle Sam hasn't done enough to facilitate collaboration and bridge the gap between educators, developers, and scientists involved in algorithms and developing hardware."

This being the US, there aren't any blockages here for the US Gov't to remove.

Pick up a phone. Write an email. Send up smoke signals. No one is stopping you.

If you read about something interesting, you can follow up yourself. Why do you need something special (ie Government money) to do that? There are a wealth of official journals, blogs, websites, periodicals etc. dedicated to quantum computing. It's a small enough community that most of them likely are familiar with each others' work and can reach out if they want. The biggest blockage I could see would be private companies being proprietary with their research. Like it or not, D-Wave isn't sharing with Intel, Intel isn't sharing with Microsoft, Microsoft isn't sharing with Google.

There are likely insights each of them COULD share with each other, but they won't because they all want to capitalize first on what their research produces. But the Government won't stop that. That's healthy competition and as long as companies are spending the money on all that skull sweat, the taxpayers aren't. No way in hell the Gov't will step in at this point.