From: Robbie Lindauer (robblin@thetip.org)
Date: Wed Aug 06 2003 - 12:01:17 MDT
>> Wouldn't it be possible to create a quantum computer based on
>> spin-coupling as a communication "backplane"?
>
> Yep, you could propose such a computer. But Robert will jump
> all over your butt for proposing "magic physics" on the ExI list.
Okay, something specific without doing any actual engineering.
The idea would be to use standard (fast, good, reliable, future...)
computers to store and house and process data and use spin-coupling as
a networking technique for messaging across the
ultra-wide-area-network. This ASSUMING that spin-coupling can be made
reliable as a communication medium.
It strikes me there are a few "hard" problems as with all
networking-related problems 1) interference and 2) medium 4)
bandwidth. I expect that interference can be overcome as a problem
with redundancy and error-checking and such. I expect that if you were
to build a truly distributed machine, the nodes could be connected by
some kind of medium at relatively short distances (say two every 100k
Kilometers) making propagation pretty simple. What kind of medium
would support the interference-less communication of spin-spin
coupled-pairs over long distances will have to be left to better
physicists than me. Perhaps someone who gets a free pass could jump in?
Then on the client nodes you'd use something like pre-executed
instructions (assuming that the computers you build would be faster
than the communication medium) where you execute all the possible (or
likely) scenarios "virtually" until you know which scenario is the
actual one, commit once confirmation is received and move on. This
would allow relatively efficient communication method - only send the
confirmed instruction set's signature rather than sending the whole
thing.
I don't see this particular problem as technically less tractable than
actually creating a replica of a personality in any computer AT ALL.
I do see that it's likely to be very expensive and organizationally
getting enough people together to agree that it's a good enough idea
that they could dedicate three or four generations worth of lives to
building such a thing sounds like the a genuinely intractable problem.
> (The primary objection at least in my mind currently is that
> for QC to be useful you are going to have to propose a method
> for generating and maintaining kilo, mega, and giga amounts
> of qubits.
Storage would have to be standard, I'm only proposing a communication
mechanism. The problem is how to keep the nodes in sync. If there
is a moore's law of networking speed, then we can expect with Gigabit
wireless over sattelite TODAY, we can expect multi-terrabyte wireless
over stellar distances within the next 100 years or so.
R
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