Big Data, Cloud, Smart Mobile And Even AR Morph Into One Mind Boggling Thing

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Actually One Big Thing

by David Mayes

This IEEE Talk discusses the three biggest trends in online technology and proposes that in fact, they represent one huge integrated trend that is already having a major impact on the way we live, work and think. The 2012 Obama Campaign’s Dashboard mobile application, integrating Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile is perhaps the most significant example of this trend, combining all three technologies into one big thing. A major shakeout and industry consolidation seems inevitable. Additional developments as diverse as augmented reality, the Internet of Things, Smart Grid, near field communication, mobile payment processing, and location-based services are also considered as linked to this overall trend.

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? from David Mayes

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IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Presentation Transcript

• 1. Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Integrated Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 1
• 2. IEEE: UBC Okanagan Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 ©David Mayes 2
• 3. Speaker Introduction IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 3
• 4. David Mayes: LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mayo615 Personal Blog: http://mayo615.com UBC Office: EME 4151 (250) 807-9821 / Hours by appt. Email: david.mayes@ubc.ca mayo0615@gmail.com Mobile: (250) 864-9552 Twitter: @mayo615 Experience: Executive management, access to venture capital, International business development, sales & marketing, entrepreneurial mentorship, technology assessment, strategic planning, renewable energy technology. Intel Corporation (US/Europe/Japan), 01 Computers Group (UK) Ltd, Mobile Data International (Canada/Intl.), Silicon Graphics (US), Sun Microsystems (US), Ascend Communications (US/Intl.), P-Cube (US/Israel/Intl.), Global Internet Group LLP (US/Intl.), New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 4
• 5. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 5
• 6. Some Historical Context IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 6
• 7. Canada’s McLuhan: The First Hint “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.” Marshall McLuhan, “Gutenberg Galaxy”, 1962, Canadian author, educator, & philosopher (1911 – 1980) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Video: The “McLuhan” Scene from Annie Hall © David Mayes 7
• 8. Stuart Brand, Jobs & Woz: The Whole Earth Catalog IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 8
• 9. Grove, Noyce and Moore IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? “We had no idea at all that we had turned the first stone on something that was going to be an $80 billion business.” -Gordon Moore ©David Mayes 9
• 10. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Vin Cerf IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 10
• 11. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 12. The Emergence of SoMoClo IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Social + Mobile + Cloud ©David Mayes 12
• 13. Emergence of Social Media IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 13
• 14. 2012 Social Media Market Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 14
• 15. Emergence of “Cloud Computing” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 15
• 16. Emergence of End-user Cloud Apps IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 16
• 17. 2012 Cloud Enterprise Players IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 17
• 18. The Key Issue: Data Privacy Reliability, and Security Despite reassurances, there is no permanent solution, no silver bullet. The only solution is to unplug IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 18
• 19. Recent Cyber Security News: • Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s new book on China: • “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information” as well as “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, the willingness of China’s government and state companies to use cyber crime gives the country an economic and political edge. • NY Times, WSJ hacking last week traced to China • Twitter theft of 250K users personal information last week • Sony PlayStation Anonymous hacks (twice in 2 weeks) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 19
• 20. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 21. The Emergence of “Big Data” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 21
• 22. Emergence of “Big Data” • Major advances in scale and sophistication of government intelligence gathering and analysis • Cost no object • NSA PRISM global telecom surveillance programPost 9/11 World IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 22
• 23. An Interesting Scientific Analogy Chaos, with reference to chaos theory, refers to an apparent lack of order in a system that nevertheless obeys particular laws or rules; this understanding of chaos is synonymous with dynamical instability, a condition discovered by the physicist Henri Poincare in the early 20th century that refers to an inherent lack of predictability in some physical systems. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 23
• 24. Key Drivers of the Emergence of Big Data • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Massive cost decline in data storage • Emergence of solid state memristor • Google Spanner 1st global real-time database • DARPA “Python” programming language • Data Center data storage accumulation • 2.7 zettabytes currently and growing rapidly • A zettabyte equals 1021 bytes (1000 exabytes) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 24
• 25. The Big Data Landscape Today IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 25
• 26. The Key Issue: Privacy “Get over it! You have no privacy!” Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 26
• 27. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 28. The Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 28
• 29. Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 29
• 30. Key Drivers of Smart Mobile • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Focus on reducing heat: gate leakage • Intel Atom “all day battery life” is a beginning • Massive cost decline in data storage • Mobile bandwidth:4G/LTE “no cost difference” • “White space” metro Wi-Fi potential maybe • New available spectrum between digital TV channels: increased transmit power • PC market death: Dell Computer & HP IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 30
• 31. Mobile-based Services • GPS, Cloud, personal and database info on mobile • Geotagging from current location tied to your objective: • Find merchandise, restaurant, bar, etc. • Find and tag people • Find people with similar interests nearby • The rise of the mobile gaming market • Already well-established in Hong Kong, Seoul • North America far behind Asian telecom markets • Facebook has just announced LBS plans • The downside: battery drain issue still critical • “People want their phones to do too much” • 4G LTE, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Streaming, Mobile Gaming IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 31
• 32. Location-based Services Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 32
• 33. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 34. The Convergence of “ToDaClo” Touch + Data + Cloud IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 34
• 35. David Mayes ‹#›
• 36. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 37. Discussion: Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile, Big Deal or Not? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 37
• 38. My Key Takeaway Points • Even from the 50,000 foot level, a shakeout and consolidation seem inevitable • A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money • There will be “snake oil” sold that does not work • Nevertheless these three new markets are actually one unified market, and likely: The Next Big Thing IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 38
• 39. What Do You Think? • No. ToDaClo is mostly media hype, and not a “Big Deal.” • I’m skeptical. ToDaClo will probably be a “Big Deal,” but I haven’t seen much yet • Maybe. I do not know yet whether ToDaClo will be a Big Deal • Yes. ToDaClo is a Big Deal and it is already changing our lives IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 39
• 40. Thank You! IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 40
• 41. ©David Mayes 41

 

D-Wave Quantum Machine Tested by NASA and Google Shows Promise

Researchers from Google’s AI Lab say a controversial quantum machine that it and NASA have been testing since 2013 resoundingly beat a conventional computer in a series of tests.

Source: Controversial Quantum Machine Tested by NASA and Google Shows Promise | MIT Technology Review

Google Says It Has Proved Its Controversial Quantum Computer Really Works

Researchers from Google’s AI Lab say a controversial quantum machine that it and NASA have been testing since 2013 resoundingly beat a conventional computer in a series of tests.

• By Tom Simonite on December 8, 2015

Inside this box is a superconducting chip, cooled to within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero, that might put new power behind artificial-intelligence software.

Google says it has proof that a controversial machine it bought in 2013 really can use quantum physics to work through a type of math that’s crucial to artificial intelligence much faster than a conventional computer.

Governments and leading computing companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google are trying to develop what are called quantum computers because using the weirdness of quantum mechanics to represent data should unlock immense data-crunching powers. Computing giants believe quantum computers could make their artificial-intelligence software much more powerful and unlock scientific leaps in areas like materials science. NASA hopes quantum computers could help schedule rocket launches and simulate future missions and spacecraft. “It is a truly disruptive technology that could change how we do everything,” said Rupak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Biswas spoke at a media briefing at the research center about the agency’s work with Google on a machine the search giant bought in 2013 from Canadian startup D-Wave systems, which is marketed as “the world’s first commercial quantum computer.” The computer is installed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and operates on data using a superconducting chip called a quantum annealer. A quantum annealer is hard-coded with an algorithm suited to what are called “optimization problems,” which are common in machine-learning and artificial-intelligence software.

However, D-Wave’s chips are controversial among quantum physicists. Researchers inside and outside the company have been unable to conclusively prove that the devices can tap into quantum physics to beat out conventional computers.

Hartmut Neven, leader of Google’s Quantum AI Lab in Los Angeles, said today that his researchers have delivered some firm proof of that. They set up a series of races between the D-Wave computer installed at NASA against a conventional computer with a single processor. “For a specific, carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem we achieve a 100-million-fold speed-up,” said Neven.

Google posted a research paper describing its results online last night, but it has not been formally peer-reviewed. Neven said that journal publications would be forthcoming.

Google’s results are striking—but even if verified, they would only represent partial vindication for D-Wave. The computer that lost in the contest with the quantum machine was running code that had it solve the problem at hand using an algorithm similar to the one baked into the D-Wave chip. An alternative algorithm is known that could have let the conventional computer be more competitive, or even win, by exploiting what Neven called a “bug” in D-Wave’s design. Neven said the test his group staged is still important because that shortcut won’t be available to regular computers when they compete with future quantum annealers capable of working on larger amounts of data.

Matthias Troyer, a physics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, said making that come true is crucial if chips like D-Wave’s are to become useful. “It will be important to explore if there are problems where quantum annealing has advantages over even the best classical algorithms, and to find if there are classes of application problems where such advantages can be realized,” he said, in a statement with two colleagues.

Last year Troyer’s group published a high-profile study of an earlier D-Wave chip that concluded it didn’t offer advantages over conventional machines. That question has now been partially resolved, they say. “Google’s results indeed show a huge advantage on these carefully chosen instances.”

Google is competing with D-Wave to make a quantum annealer that could do useful work. Last summer the Silicon Valley giant opened a new lab in Santa Barbara, headed by a leading academic researcher, John Martinis (see “Google Launches Effort to Build Its Own Quantum Computer”).

Martinis is also working on quantum hardware that would not be limited to optimization problems, as annealers are. A universal quantum computer, as such a machine would be called, could be programmed to take on any problem and would be much more useful but is expected to take longer to perfect. Government and university labs, Microsoft (see “Microsoft’s Quantum Mechanics”), and IBM (see “IBM Shows Off a Quantum Computing Chip”) are also working on that technology.

John Giannandrea, a VP of engineering at Google who coördinates the company’s research, said that if quantum annealers could be made practical, they would find many uses powering up Google’s machine-learning software. “We’ve already encountered problems in the course of our products impractical to solve with existing computers, and we have a lot of computers,” he said. However, Giannandrea noted, “it may be several years before this research makes a difference to Google products.”

Canada’s Entrepreneurship Dilemma: Decades Of Anemic Research Investment

UPDATE: May 21, 2015.  As if to drive home the Canadian economic crisis, Goldman Sachs has just released an oil price forecast suggesting that North Sea Brent crude will still be $55 in 2020, five years from now.  As Alberta Western Canadian Select (WCS) bitumen is valued lower on commodity markets this is extremely bad news for Canada. Further, the well-known Canadian economic forecasting firm, Enform is predicting that job losses across all of western Canada, not only Alberta, could reach 180,000. 

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This issue has driven me absolutely nuts since I first arrived in Canada from Silicon Valley.  It did not take me long to figure out that things did not work they way they did in California, and that there wasn’t much of a true entrepreneurial economy here.  Since then, I have also been appointed to the Canada Foundation for Innovation grant process, providing me with insight into how R&D funding works in Canada. I have seen many issues in Canada that have impaired the nation’s ability to develop an entrepreneurial culture,  among them is the inherent Canadian conservatism and short term horizon of investors unfamiliar with technology venture investment.  But none has been worse than Canada’s decades-long neglect of adequate funding for research and development nationwide.  A review of the OECD data on Canada’s investment in R&D compared to other industrialized nations paints a sorry picture.  This has led directly to a poor showing in industrial innovation and productivity. This is further compounded by the current government’s myopic focus on natural resource extraction, Canada’s so-called “natural resource curse.” The result now is an economic train wreck for Canada.  The fossil fuel based economy has collapsed and is not forecast to recover anytime in the near future.  During the boom time for fossil fuel extraction, there has been essentially no rational strategy to increase spending on R&D and innovation, and hence no increase in economic diversification.  Now the problem is nearly intractable, and may take decades to reverse.

 ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL, by Bruce Smardon, McGill-Queens University Press

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL explains that since 1960, Canadian industry has lagged behind other advanced capitalist economies in its level of commitment to research and development. Asleep at the Switch explains the reasons for this underperformance, despite a series of federal measures to spur technological innovation in Canada. It is worth noting that Arvind Gupta, President of The University of British Columbia, and former head of MITACS, the organization at UBC tasked to promote R&D, has also been an outspoken proponent for increased R&D, at one point editorializing in the Vancouver Sun, that Canada needed an innovation czar, to promote innovation in the same manner as the 2010 Seize the Podium program to enhance gold medal performance for Canada.

Also, as a member of the 2012 Canada Foundation for Innovation Multidisciplinary Assessment process, and the University of British Columbia 2015 CFI grant preparation process, I can say without reservation that the Canada suffers from inadequate R&D funding and its consequences.

ANALYSIS From CBC News

Canada’s research dilemma is that companies don’t do it here

Ten-year study says repairs needed for rebound will be costly and difficult

REBLOGGED: By Don Pittis, CBC News Posted: May 15, 2015 5:00 AM ET Last Updated: May 15, 2015 6:31 AM ET

Northern Electric was a domestic Canadian technology success story that became the telecom equipment giant Nortel Networks. But when Nortel failed, the lack of an R&D hub meant there were no startups to replace it. (The Canadian Press)

As Stephen Harper handed out more tax breaks for Canadian manufacturers in Windsor, Ont., yesterday, you might ask, “With that kind of support, why is Canada’s industrial economy in such bad shape?” Political economist Bruce Smardon thinks he has the answer.

Smardon says companies operating in Canada just aren’t spending enough on domestic research and development, and the Harper government is only the latest in a long line of governments, stretching back to that of John A. Macdonald, that have contributed to the problem.

As China’s resource-hungry economy goes off the boil, taking Canada’s resource producers with it, everyone including Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz, has been waiting for a rebound in Canada’s industrial economy.

But there are growing fears such a Canadian rebound is not on the cards. As the Globe and Mail’s Scott Barlow reported last week (paywall), despite having the top university for generating new tech startups, Canada has repeatedly failed to become a hub for industrial innovation.

Best in North America

Interviewed by the New York Times, the president of the startup generator Y Combinator, Sam Altman, called the University of Waterloo the school that stood out in North America for creating new ideas that turned into companies.

But as Barlow reported, there is statistical evidence that Waterloo’s success has not translated into R&D success, as Canadian industrial innovation continues to decline.

After 10 years of research, Smardon thinks his recent book, Asleep at the Switch — short-listed this year for one of Canada’s most prestigious academic book awards — provides the answer.

Political science professor Bruce Smardon’s book, Asleep at the Switch, examining Canada’s R&D failure, has been short-listed for one of Canada’s most prestigious academic prizes. (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

And, believe it or not, Smardon traces the chain of events back to Canada’s first prime minister and his tariff policy of 1879. Paradoxically, those rules were put in place to protect Canadian manufacturers from cheap U.S. goods, that were in turn protected by U.S. tariff walls.

Central Canadian boom

For the industries of central Canada, the tariff barriers worked. In the years before the First World War, says Smardon, Canada was second only to the United States in creating an economy of mass production and mass consumption, where workers could afford to buy the products they produced.

However, prevented by tariffs from exporting U.S. goods to Canada, American companies did the next best thing. They started, or bought, branch plants north of the border, wholly- or partly-owned subsidiaries that used U.S. technology in Canadian factories.

Smardon says that started a trend that continues today. The majority of R&D was being done in the home country of the industrial parent, not in the Canadian subsidiaries. And in the Mulroney and Chrétien era of free trade, he says, relatively high-tech branch plants, such as Inglis and Westinghouse, started to close as products were supplied more efficiently by the U.S. parent factories.

There were Canadian R&D stars such as Nortel and Blackberry, says Smardon. But they were exceptions. And when those stars began to set, the lack of a traditional R&D hub in Canada meant there were few young research-based companies ready to come up and replace them.

Tax credit paradox

The paradox, he says, is that Canadian taxpayers have spent a fortune on R&D tax credits. The 2011 Jenkins report showed that as a percentage of GDP, Canadian R&D tax incentives were higher than anyplace else. But as Barlow showed, Canadian R&D still lags behind.

The reason, Smardon concludes, is that while taxpayers fork out for R&D, industrial R&D doesn’t happen here but in traditional R&D hubs abroad. He says that free trade agreements and a longstanding view by Canadian governments that business knows best mean it’s very difficult to put conditions on how that money is spent.

“If we are concerned with developing a manufacturing base in the more advanced research intensive sectors, we’re going to have to have incentive programs at the very minimum, that are clear in insuring that any incentives are used to develop products and processes in Canada,” says Smardon. “They’ve got to think through how that can be done.”

But Smardon is not optimistic. He says that free trade and the free market philosophy has become so entrenched in Canadian thinking that it’s impossible to change.

Market rules

He says that is why the Harper government became so enamoured with the business of pumping and exporting unprocessed oil and gas while the Canadian industrial economy crumbled. It was exactly what the global free market wanted.

It may indeed be that global market forces decide Canada is an icy wasteland that is best at producing raw materials. It may decide that the best way to use our brilliant young people is to send them to California to develop their business ideas there.

But if we want more than that, perhaps handing out ineffective tax incentives is not going to be enough.

Moore’s Law at 50: At Least A Decade More To Go And Why That’s Important

Gordon Moore, now 86, is still spry and still given to the dry sense of humor for which he has always been known.  In an Intel interview this year he said that he had Googled “Moore’s Law” and “Murphy’s Law,” and Moore’s beat Murphy’s by two to one,” demonstrating how ubiquitous is the usage of Dr. Moore’s observation. This week we are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics magazine, in which Dr. Moore first described his vision of doubling the number of transistors on a chip every year or so.

It may seem geeky to be interested in the details of 14 nanometer (billionth of a meter) integrated circuit design rules, 7 nanometer FinFET (transistor) widths, or 5 nanometer line wire widths, but the fact of matter is that these arcane topics are driving the future of technology applications, telecommunications, business and economic productivity.  As just one example, this week’s top telecommunications business news is the proposed merger of Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, with the vision to deploy a 5 G (fifth generation) LTE (long term evolution) mobile telephony network. Building out such a high speed voice and data network is almost entirely dependent on the power of the microprocessors in the system and ultimately Moore’s Law.  Nokia apparently believes that it can deploy this technology sooner rather than later and essentially leap frog the competition.  My UBC Management students will recall that in my first university teaching experience in Industry Analysis, I chose to expose them to the semiconductor industry for this exact reason.  Semiconductors are in virtually every electrical device we use on a daily basis.

However, as we cross this milestone we are able to see that we are near the limits of the physics of Moore’s Law.  International Business Strategies, a Los Gatos based consulting firm, estimates that only a decade ago, it cost only $16 million to design and test a new very large scale integated circuit (VLSI), but that today the design and testing cost has skyrocketed to $132 million.  Keep in mind that the cost of design, fabrication and testing of bleeding edge IC’s has been reduced dramatically over the decades by automation, also driven by Moore’s Law. So we are seeing a horizon line.  That said, entirely new technologies are already in the laboratories and may, in a way,  extend Moore’s Law, and the dramatic improvements in cost and productivity that come with it, but through entirely new and different means.

 

 

Quantum tech is more than just crazy science: It’s good business from mobile payments to fighting the NSA,

Management students may ask why the title of this post claims that quantum technology is good business. So let me try to explain, and then read on to the PandoDaily post by David Holmes. The bottom line is that some basic understanding of quantum mechanics is going to be a valuable management skill going forward. Why? Read on

Yesterday, National Public Radio in the United States (which can be heard online) broadcast a fascinating discussion about Monday’s announcement of the long awaited breakthrough of proving the existence of gravitational waves which include the fingerprint of the original Big Bang.  Featuring legendary astrophysicist Leonard Susskind of Stanford and a number of other leading physicists, the discussion inevitably drifted to quantum mechanics, and the original Big Bang itself, which Stanford Physics Professor. Chao-Lin Kuo, described as “mind scrambling.”  Quantum entanglement is another area that defies common sense: particles that mimic each other and change faster than the speed of light, which should be impossible.  Einstein’s famous quote, “God does not play dice,” was his reaction to the non-deterministic nature of quantum events and theory, which also violate his general theory of relativity. It turns out the random nature of quantum mechanics provides a superior solution for hideously complex problems, finding the best “probabilistic” solutions. Quantum mechanics is also providing a potential way forward in encryption and privacy.

Read and listen on NPR: Scientists Announce Big Bang Breakthrough

However, all of this “mind scrambling” pure science is rapidly becoming applied science: science becoming useful technological innovation and applied to economic activity.  Some of my students may recall our discussions of Moore’s Law in semiconductor design. As  Moore’s Law reaches it finite limit, quantum “technology” is creating one path forward, and providing new solutions to Internet security and supercomputing.  David Holme’s PandoDaily article today attempts to explain in greater detail why this is important for business. 

Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave Systems has written an excellent explanation in layman’s terms, of the importance of quantum computing, and how it differs from “deterministic” computing.

Read more:  Solving the unsolvable: a quantum boost for supercomputing

Best of all there is an excellent book for those willing to devote the time and grey matter to quantum physics, “Quantum physics, a beginners’ guide,” by Alistair Rae, available in paperback on Amazon or Kindle e-book.

Speedy qubits lead the quantum evolution

Understanding the applications of quantum computing

SUMMARY:Advances in quantum computing can have countless applications from drug discovery to investment and health care. Lockheed Martin’s collaborations with the University of Southern California and D-Wave Systems continue to push science and technology boundaries, recently quadrupling qubit capacity in the D-Wave Two machine.

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There are a few defining moments of innovation that we can point to that changed the future. Quantum computing may be that next big moment.

“Computationally, quantum computing is the equivalent of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk,” said Greg Tallant, the program manager at Lockheed Martin.

Nearly everything around us, from cars and airplanes to smartphones and watches, has software. Debugging millions of lines of code for these increasingly complex systems is a big data problem that could cost big bucks.

“With quantum computing it’s not that we can solve problems that we cannot solve classically, it’s just that we can solve things faster,” said Daniel Lidar, the Scientific and Technical director at the University of Southern California Lockheed Martin Quantum Computation Center (QCC).

Unlike regular computers, quantum computers can simultaneously test all possible input combinations because they are not limited to just zeroes and ones (i.e., bits). Quantum bits, or qubits, can be both zero and one and all points in between, all at once.

A joint effort of Lockheed Martin Corporation and USC, the QCC recently upgraded to the D-Wave Two quantum computer designed with 512 qubits, increased from 128 in the original D-Wave One, both built by D-Wave Systems. The D-Wave Two is the largest programmable quantum information processor built.

“The QCC is a perfect example of industry and science coming together to advance our knowledge and quantum capabilities, pushing the boundaries of information science and technology,” said Bo Ewald, President of D-Wave Systems U.S.

Gigaom

There are a few defining moments of innovation that we can point to that changed the future. Quantum computing may be that next big moment.

“Computationally, quantum computing is the equivalent of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk,” said Greg Tallant, the program manager at Lockheed Martin.

Nearly everything around us, from cars and airplanes to smartphones and watches, has software. Debugging millions of lines of code for these increasingly complex systems is a big data problem that could cost big bucks.

“With quantum computing it’s not that we can solve problems that we cannot solve classically, it’s just that we can solve things faster,” said Daniel Lidar, the Scientific and Technical director at the University of Southern California Lockheed Martin Quantum Computation Center (QCC).

Unlike regular computers, quantum computers can simultaneously test all possible input combinations because they are not limited to just zeroes and ones (i.e., bits). Quantum…

View original post 98 more words

A breakthrough in quantum cryptography could make financial markets of the future cheat-proof

As I wrote in an earlier post the world of quantum computing and cryptography shows great promise for the future, particularly in overcoming the current problems with encryption and Internet privacy.

Read more: Quantum encryption takes center stage in wake of NSA encryption cracking

Quantum Computing Takes Center Stage In Wake of NSA Encryption Cracking

In the late 1990’s while I was with Ascend Communications, I participated in the creation of the “point-to-point tunneling protocol” (PPTP) with engineers at Microsoft and Cisco Systems, now an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) industry standard.  PPTP is the technical means for creating the “virtual private networks” we use at UBC, by encrypting “open” Internet packets with IPSEC 128 bit code, buried in public packets. It was an ingenious solution, enabling private Internet traffic that we assumed would last for a very long time.  It was not to be, as we now know.  Most disturbing, in the 1990’s the US Congress debated giving the government the key to all encryption, which was resoundingly defeated. Now, the NSA appears to have illegally circumvented this prohibition and cracked encryption anyway. But this discussion is not about the political, legal and moral issues, which are significant.  In this post I am more interested in exploring the question: “So now what do we do?” There may be an answer on the horizon, and Canada is already a significant participant in the potential solution.

As it happens, Canada is already at the forefront of quantum computing, a critically important new area of research and development, that has significant future potential in both computing and cryptography.  I have previously written about Vancouver-based D-Wave, which has produced commercial systems that have been purchased by Google and Lockheed Martin Aerospace.  The Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Ontario is the other major center of quantum computing research in Canada. Without taking a major diversion to explain quantum mechanics and its applications in computing and cryptography, there is a great PBS Nova broadcast, available online, which provides a basic tutorial.  The Economist article below, also does an admirable job of making this area understandable, and the role that the Waterloo research centre is playing in advancing cryptography to an entirely new level.

We need to insure that Canada remains at the forefront of this critically important new technology.

Cryptography

The solace of quantum

Eavesdropping on secret communications is about to get harder

REBLOGGED from The Economist online edition

First published May 25th 2013 

• CRYPTOGRAPHY is an arms race between Alice and Bob, and Eve. These are the names cryptographers give to two people who are trying to communicate privily, and to a third who is trying to intercept and decrypt their conversation. Currently, Alice and Bob are ahead—just. But Eve is catching up. Alice and Bob are therefore looking for a whole new way of keeping things secret. And they may soon have one, courtesy of quantum mechanics.

At the moment cryptography concentrates on making the decrypting part as hard as possible. The industry standard, known as RSA (after its inventors, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), relies on two keys, one public and one private. These keys are very big numbers, each of which is derived from the product of the same two prime numbers. Anyone can encrypt a message using the public key, but only someone with the private key can decrypt it. To find the private key, you have to work out what the primes are from the public key. Make the primes big enough—and hunting big primes is something of a sport among mathematicians—and the task of factorising the public key to reveal the primes, though possible in theory, would take too long in practice. (About 40 quadrillion years with the primes then available, when the system was introduced in 1977.)

Since the 1970s, though, the computers that do the factorisation have got bigger and faster. Some cryptographers therefore fear for the future of RSA. Hence the interest in quantum cryptography.

Alice, Bob and Werner, too?

The most developed form of quantum cryptography, known as quantum key distribution (QKD), relies on stopping interception, rather than preventing decryption. Once again, the key is a huge number—one with hundreds of digits, if expressed in the decimal system. Alice sends this to Bob as a series of photons (the particles of light) before she sends the encrypted message. For Eve to read this transmission, and thus obtain the key, she must destroy some photons. Since Bob will certainly notice the missing photons, Eve will need to create and send identical ones to Bob to avoid detection. But Alice and Bob (or, rather, the engineers who make their equipment) can stop that by using two different quantum properties, such as the polarities of the photons, to encode the ones and zeros of which the key is composed. According to Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, only one of these two properties can be measured, so Eve cannot reconstruct each photon without making errors. If Bob detects such errors he can tell Alice not to send the actual message until the line has been secured.

One exponent of this approach is ID Quantique, a Swiss firm. In collaboration with Battelle, an American one, it is building a 700km (440-mile) fibre-optic QKD link between Battelle’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, and the firm’s facilities in and around Washington, DC. Battelle will use this to protect its own information and the link will also be hired to other firms that want to move sensitive data around.

QuintessenceLabs, an Australian firm, has a different approach to encoding. Instead of tinkering with photons’ polarities, it changes their phases and amplitudes. The effect is the same, though: Eve will necessarily give herself away if she eavesdrops. Using this technology, QuintessenceLabs is building a 560km QKD link between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which organises many of NASA’s unmanned scientific missions, and the Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley, where a lot of the agency’s scientific investigations are carried out.

A third project, organised by Jane Nordholt of Los Alamos National Laboratory, has just demonstrated how a pocket-sized QKD transmitter called the QKarD can secure signals sent over public data networks to control smart electricity grids. Smart grids balance demand and supply so that electricity can be distributed more efficiently. This requires constant monitoring of the voltage, current and frequency of the grid in lots of different places—and the rapid transmission of the results to control centres. That transmission, however, also needs to be secure in case someone malicious wants to bring the system down.

In their different ways, all these projects are ambitious. All, though, rely on local fixed lines to carry the photons. Other groups of researchers are thinking more globally. To do that means sending quantum-secured data to and from satellites.

At least three groups are working on this: Thomas Jennewein and his team at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Canada; a collaboration led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China; and Alex Ling and Artur Ekert at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore.

Dr Jennewein’s proposal is for Alice to beam polarisation-encoded photons to a satellite. Once she has established a key, Bob, on another continent, will wait until the satellite passes over him so he can send some more photons to it to create a second key. The satellite will then mix the keys together and transmit the result to Bob, who can work out the first key because he has the second. Alice and Bob now possess a shared key, so they can communicate securely by normal (less intellectually exhausting) terrestrial networks. Dr Jennewein plans to test the idea, using an aircraft rather than a satellite, at some point during the next 12 months.

An alternative, but more involved, satellite method is to use entangled photon pairs. Both Dr Zeilinger’s and Dr Ling’s teams have been trying this.

Entanglement is a quantum effect that connects photons intimately, even when they are separated by a large distance. Measure one particle and you know the state of its partner. In this way Alice and Bob can share a key made of entangled photon pairs generated on a satellite. Dr Zeilinger hopes to try this with a QKD transmitter based on the International Space Station. He and his team have been experimenting with entanglement at ground level for several years. In 2007 they sent entangled photon pairs 144km through the air across the Canary Islands. Dr Ling’s device will test entanglement in orbit, but not send photons down to Earth.

If this sort of thing works at scale, it should keep Alice and Bob ahead for years. As for poor Eve, she will find herself entangled in an unbreakable quantum web.

From the print edition: Science and technology

Integrated Big Data, Cloud, and Smart Mobile: One Big Deal or Not?

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: One Big Deal or Not?

by David Mayes on Jul 10, 2013

This IEEE Talk discusses the three biggest trends in online technology and proposes that in fact, they represent one huge integrated trend that is already having a major impact on the way we live, work and think. The 2012 Obama Campaign’s Dashboard mobile application, integrating Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile is perhaps the most significant example of this trend, combining all three technologies into one big thing. A major shakeout and industry consolidation seems inevitable. Additional developments as diverse as the Internet of Things, Smart Grid, near field communication, mobile payment processing, and location based services are also considered as linked to this overall trend.

IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? from David Mayes

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IEEE Talk: Integrated Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Presentation Transcript

• 1. Big Data, The Cloud, & Smart Mobile: Integrated Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 1
• 2. IEEE: UBC Okanagan Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 ©David Mayes 2
• 3. Speaker Introduction IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 3
• 4. David Mayes: LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mayo615 Personal Blog: http://mayo615.com UBC Office: EME 4151 (250) 807-9821 / Hours by appt. Email: david.mayes@ubc.ca mayo0615@gmail.com Mobile: (250) 864-9552 Twitter: @mayo615 Experience: Executive management, access to venture capital, International business development, sales & marketing, entrepreneurial mentorship, technology assessment, strategic planning, renewable energy technology. Intel Corporation (US/Europe/Japan), 01 Computers Group (UK) Ltd, Mobile Data International (Canada/Intl.), Silicon Graphics (US), Sun Microsystems (US), Ascend Communications (US/Intl.), P-Cube (US/Israel/Intl.), Global Internet Group LLP (US/Intl.), New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 4
• 5. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 5
• 6. Some Historical Context IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 6
• 7. Canada’s McLuhan: The First Hint “The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.” Marshall McLuhan, “Gutenberg Galaxy”, 1962, Canadian author, educator, & philosopher (1911 – 1980) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Video: The “McLuhan” Scene from Annie Hall © David Mayes 7
• 8. Stuart Brand, Jobs & Woz: The Whole Earth Catalog IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 8
• 9. Grove, Noyce and Moore IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? “We had no idea at all that we had turned the first stone on something that was going to be an $80 billion business.” -Gordon Moore ©David Mayes 9
• 10. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Vin Cerf IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 10
• 11. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 12. The Emergence of SoMoClo IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? Social + Mobile + Cloud ©David Mayes 12
• 13. Emergence of Social Media IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 13
• 14. 2012 Social Media Market Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 14
• 15. Emergence of “Cloud Computing” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 15
• 16. Emergence of End-user Cloud Apps IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 16
• 17. 2012 Cloud Enterprise Players IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 17
• 18. The Key Issue: Data Privacy Reliability, and Security Despite reassurances, there is no permanent solution, no silver bullet. The only solution is to unplug IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 18
• 19. Recent Cyber Security News: • Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s new book on China: • “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information” as well as “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital, the willingness of China’s government and state companies to use cyber crime gives the country an economic and political edge. • NY Times, WSJ hacking last week traced to China • Twitter theft of 250K users personal information last week • Sony PlayStation Anonymous hacks (twice in 2 weeks) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 19
• 20. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 21. The Emergence of “Big Data” IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 21
• 22. Emergence of “Big Data” • Major advances in scale and sophistication of government intelligence gathering and analysis • Cost no object • NSA PRISM global telecom surveillance programPost 9/11 World IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 22
• 23. An Interesting Scientific Analogy Chaos, with reference to chaos theory, refers to an apparent lack of order in a system that nevertheless obeys particular laws or rules; this understanding of chaos is synonymous with dynamical instability, a condition discovered by the physicist Henri Poincare in the early 20th century that refers to an inherent lack of predictability in some physical systems. IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 23
• 24. Key Drivers of the Emergence of Big Data • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Massive cost decline in data storage • Emergence of solid state memristor • Google Spanner 1st global real-time database • DARPA “Python” programming language • Data Center data storage accumulation • 2.7 zettabytes currently and growing rapidly • A zettabyte equals 1021 bytes (1000 exabytes) IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 24
• 25. The Big Data Landscape Today IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 25
• 26. The Key Issue: Privacy “Get over it! You have no privacy!” Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 26
• 27. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 28. The Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 28
• 29. Emergence of Smart Mobile IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 29
• 30. Key Drivers of Smart Mobile • Moore’s Law – compute cost and power • Design rules, multi-core, 3D design • Focus on reducing heat: gate leakage • Intel Atom “all day battery life” is a beginning • Massive cost decline in data storage • Mobile bandwidth:4G/LTE “no cost difference” • “White space” metro Wi-Fi potential maybe • New available spectrum between digital TV channels: increased transmit power • PC market death: Dell Computer & HP IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 30
• 31. Mobile-based Services • GPS, Cloud, personal and database info on mobile • Geotagging from current location tied to your objective: • Find merchandise, restaurant, bar, etc. • Find and tag people • Find people with similar interests nearby • The rise of the mobile gaming market • Already well-established in Hong Kong, Seoul • North America far behind Asian telecom markets • Facebook has just announced LBS plans • The downside: battery drain issue still critical • “People want their phones to do too much” • 4G LTE, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Streaming, Mobile Gaming IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 31
• 32. Location-based Services Landscape IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 32
• 33. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 34. The Convergence of “ToDaClo” Touch + Data + Cloud IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 34
• 35. David Mayes ‹#›
• 36. Agenda • Some Historical Context • The Emergence of SoMoClo • The Emergence of Big Data • The Emergence of Smart Mobile • The Convergence of ToDaClo • What Do You Think? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not?
• 37. Discussion: Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile, Big Deal or Not? IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 37
• 38. My Key Takeaway Points • Even from the 50,000 foot level, a shakeout and consolidation seem inevitable • A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money • There will be “snake oil” sold that does not work • Nevertheless these three new markets are actually one unified market, and likely: The Next Big Thing IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 38
• 39. What Do You Think? • No. ToDaClo is mostly media hype, and not a “Big Deal.” • I’m skeptical. ToDaClo will probably be a “Big Deal,” but I haven’t seen much yet • Maybe. I do not know yet whether ToDaClo will be a Big Deal • Yes. ToDaClo is a Big Deal and it is already changing our lives IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 39
• 40. Thank You! IEEE UBC Okanagan Big Data, The Cloud, and Smart Mobile: Big Deal or Not? ©David Mayes 40
• 41. ©David Mayes 41

 

More research emerges in defense of D-Wave as a quantum machine

D-Wave is cleverly and effectively using expert testimonials as its primary marketing strategy = credibility.

Add another point to the D-Wave Systems scorecard. Researchers at the University of Southern California have been experimenting with the Lockheed Martin’s quantum computer, housed there and have concluded that it can in fact do work that’s in line with quantum mechanics.

From a news release USC issued Friday:

“Using a specific test problem involving eight qubits we have verified that the D-Wave processor performs optimization calculations (that is, finds lowest energy solutions) using a procedure that is consistent with quantum annealing and is inconsistent with the predictions of classical annealing,” said Daniel Lidar, scientific director of the Quantum Computing Center and one of the researchers on the team, who holds joint appointments with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The new research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, follows research presented earlier this year from Amherst College professor Catherine McGeoch showing that D-Wave’s gear can perform operations faster than classical computers in some experiments. And a couple of the USC researchers themselves previously came forth with work suggesting, but not proving, that D-Wave computer can perform quantum annealing. The latest round of research brings more credence to the idea that quantum annealing and not classical annealing is possible with D-Wave. Quantum annealing could potentially arrive at answers to problems more quickly, kind of like going through a big hill instead of going up and over it in order to arrive at the same destination.

Still, there has been plenty of pushback as to whether A D-Wave machine really is a quantum computer that’s capable of solving lots of problems much faster than classical computing systems. And the new paper from USC doesn’t actually come out and call it one. It shows consistency with quantum annealing.

Whether or not it is a full-on quantum computer, commercial adoption of it beyond Lockheed and Google and NASA is certainly inhibited at this point by the initial cost. Lockheed reportedly paid $10 million for its machine, and operating it requires some pretty cold conditions — 457 degrees below zero.

Meanwhile researchers the world over are trying to come up with different ways to enable quantum computing. Commercialization of those technologies are years off, but perhaps they will prove more acceptable to D-Wave skeptics if and when they materialize into actual products.

 

Gigaom

Add another point to the D-Wave Systems scorecard. Researchers at the University of Southern California have been experimenting with the Lockheed Martin’s quantum computer, (s lmt) housed there and have concluded that it can in fact do work that’s in line with quantum mechanics.

From a news release USC issued Friday:

“Using a specific test problem involving eight qubits we have verified that the D-Wave processor performs optimization calculations (that is, finds lowest energy solutions) using a procedure that is consistent with quantum annealing and is inconsistent with the predictions of classical annealing,” said Daniel Lidar, scientific director of the Quantum Computing Center and one of the researchers on the team, who holds joint appointments with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The new research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, follows research presented earlier this year from Amherst…

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