Components on computer chips increasingly diminish in size. This trend cannot go on forever: When the components get the size of atoms, quantum effects will play a role. This can cause errors. In his quantum computer research Falk Unger of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam calculated the number of errors that normal, classical computers can deal with. He takes his PhD on Thursday 18 September at the University of Amsterdam with his thesis Noise in Quantum and Classical Computation & Non-locality. Unger's results can help to predict the limit of Moore’s Law.
Moore’s Law states that by technological improvement the number of electronic switches on a computer chip doubles every two years. Modern computers experience so little noise that error correction is still negligible. In 2005 Shekhar Borkar (Intel) estimated that within the next ten years the increasingly smaller electronic switches will become too faulty. Using his research Unger could calculate a limit for this effect. Computer chips can still perform well with 8.856% failing bits. Higher failing rates will make a chip useless.
Quantum computations
Falk Unger also investigated the effect errors have on quantum computers – computers using effects of quantum mechanics. Quantum computers can break the security of many internet data in no-time. Well, in theory. In practice things are more unmanageable. Building a proper quantum computer is very difficult. Components are so small that errors will probably always be made in handling and processing data. Another complication is that quantum computers cannot amplify signals. Surprisingly, computations with some noise appeared to be no problem either. The attained limits for precision are important for hardware designers of quantum computers.
More information: homepage of research group Quantum Computing and Advanced Systems Research.
