Al and Ziggy

Researchers at Yale have created the first ever fully functional quantum processor. Harnessing the bizarre qualities of quantum mechanics, the processor can perform simple calculations.

Typical computers use electrons (through transistors) to compute—reading and writing information in bits. Bits have binary states; they’re either “on” or “off,” 1 or 0. Quantum computers use atoms and “qubits,” which have multiple states. Qubits can be 1, 0, 1-0, 0-1, 0+1, or 0 AND 1 simultaneously. Thus a single qubit can store much more information than a bit. Additionally, typical computers read and write numbers and solve problems sequentially. Quantum computers can read and write long strings of numbers all at once, boosting speed tremendously.

The Yale computer is made up of two artificial atoms—billions of aluminum atoms that act as a single atom—in a solid-state system. The processor is extremely unstable, capable of hanging around for only a millisecond before evaporating. Still, it’s a major breakthrough in quantum computing that will lead to more stable and capable computers in the future.

Because of their tremendous computing power and speed, quantum computers have the potential to truly revolutionize computing.

Link to TG Daily article

Two teams of U.S. scientists have pushed Moor’s Law into overdrive, crafting transistors and memory storage material on the nano scale. 

Jeremy Levy and his team at the University of Pittsburgh have created two-nanometer transistors out of lanthanum aluminate and strontium titanate. Levy used an atomic force microscope to etch a miniscule wire between the two insulators, creating the world’s smallest transistor. Even more intriguing, the team was able to use the microscope to “erase” the wire. Using this technique, the team could conceivably reconfigure the transistor to make memory modules. 

Levy says he got the idea for the transistor from an Etch A Sketch, which uses a stylus to scrape aluminum powder off a glass plate.

The new transistor is several times smaller than the smallest silicon transistor (currently 45 nanometers).

Even better, Levy says that atomic force microscopes could be miniaturized down to the size of a wristwatch. Not that you’d ever want to set up a nano transistor factory on your wrist, but still.

Meanwhile, engineers/scientists/all-around-good-guys-and-gals at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of California Berkeley have created a method of reliably making thin-film polymer memory material. Others have tried to make polymer thin-film memory material, but it usually falls apart when spread over large surfaces.

The teams at Amherst and Berkeley used a lattice of sapphire crystals to make a grid to lay the thin-film sheet on. This makes nearly perfect arrays of film that’s 15 times denser than anything that’s ever been made before. And we’re talking dense, about 250 DVDs worth of data on a surface the size of a quarter.

Behold your Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Or at least the bits and pieces that could make one.

Link to University of Pittsburgh press release

Link to Wired article