Single atom transistor

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this is amazing news, especially since they can now place the transistor with near atomic precision.
furthermore the medium is a phosphorous isotope that when combined with silicon produces chips that could be directly compatible with modern CMOS technology.

all of these factors combined shows great promise for affordable solid state quantum computing,

what are your thoughts?

will this be the birth of personal quantum computing down the line?

fixed link here

Last edited by Oodain on 20 Feb 2012, 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Redacted

Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 7:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

There are already working quantum computers (http://www.dwavesys.com) and both have the same main problem to become personal: the need of very low temperature.
Also, at first glance, a single atom transistor would be an achievement more for conventional computing than for quantum one.

thats where you are wrong,

that is excactly what a solid state system wouldnt need,
in essence from what i understand they would be no different in physical appearance and form faktor of regular silicon chips, the video even mentions direct retooling of existing production plants.

also the reason it hold greats quantum potential is the dual spin state of the phosphor atom (not that it wouldnt revolutionize conventional computing (something their placement method still might do))

Last edited by Oodain on 20 Feb 2012, 9:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

thanks you for showing the interest to actually find the link.

I had previously read this new at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/science/physicists-create-a-working-transistor-from-a-single-atom.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all where it is clearly stated that


I believe it will remain in labs for some time.

i might be wrong but when i read that i onyl read that they froze it so they could eliminate as many variables as possible, not because of any actual functional requirement (there might be too much noise as of yet at high temperatures)

the d wave system requires cryo temperature because it relies on superconducting material.

Maybe it could made a good random generator.

The need of <20mK of the d-wave system comes from the quantum decoherence, otherwise quantum superposition breaks very soon. Superconductivity is used, but it would only require about 5K (250 times hotter!, I don't know the exact material they use).
Reference: http://dwave.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/how-cold/
There are some talks in that blog which explain it deeper.

For the single atom transistor I am only guessing that quantum coherence is a problem, but I may be wrong.

without an actual paper on the specifics of the p-32 single atom system there is indeed very little we can do but speculate.

quantum decoherence might be less of an issue when the quantum circuit is embedded into a silicon substrate with atom precision, that would require another small step (the step they made from around 10nm of positioning precision to near single atom precision is astinishing in itself, that might be the true discovery,)

indeed there might be an inherent issues with scaling and interfacing multiple tansistors, this could also be why there is such a large need for cooling with the 256 qubits of the d wave (that is just me speculating again though,)

The major bugaboo is decoherence. We shall have to wait and see if anything comes of this very interesting development.

ruveyn

Sounds interesting. I didn't really focus on transistors in college, so you'll need to explain it a bit more clearly for me. I'm just interested that nanotechnology has the possibility of manipulating cells directly. I wonder if they'll have femtotechnology eventually? Then we could manipulate reality.

Dreamers thought up blimps with smoke stacks...

They where half right.