Comment on Microsoft announces quantum computing breakthrough with new Majorana 1 chip
Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 3 days agoto most people (including myself, who did take college level modern physics. course), explaining the standard model of elementary particles, is way too high of a level regardless.
its like being given scifi names and terminology, and then suddenly finding out theyre real.
archomrade@midwest.social 3 days ago
Lmao, yea I think they’re kind of playing a game with language here.
After doing some reading of various explanations, what they mean when they say they aren’t using electrons for computation is basically that the ‘thing’ they’re measuring that dictates the ‘state’ of the transistor is a quasi-particle… but that particle is only observed through the altered behavior of electrons (i guess in the case of the majorana particle, it appears as two electrons gathered together in synchrony?)
So the chip is still using electrons in its computation in the same say as a traditional transistor - you are still sending electrons into a circuit, and the ‘state’ of the bit is determined by the output signal. It’s just that, in this case, they’re looking for specific behavior of the electrons that indicate the presence and state of this ‘qbit’
That is just my layman’s understanding of it
Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
qbits in general yes. with traditional computing, a state is either on (powered) or off(unpowered). the fundamental idea of quantum physics, but also quantum computing, is that there are other aspects of an electron that can be measured and changed. which direction it spins, its offset, what direction its poles are etc.
with more different “states” that an electron can be in that can be measured, you can get that many times more data, per electron.
so in laymans terms when comparing it to a lightbulb, at a given moment in time you not only care about if the light is off or on, but what color it is, what brightness it is, how hot it is, if its making a noise, what shape its making. fundamentally speaking, having more states means you can describe something faster since youre sending out more measurable data at once.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 2 days ago
This is the best description of a quantum computing ive ever read.
straightjorkin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So much of modern tech is just misusing words they heard from sci-fi stuff that was already misusing words they heard in physics class.