Quantum Issues And Progress


Quantum computing is showing significant promise, and research is beginning to move from the earliest stages to a deeper understanding of what works best commercially and why. On paper, quantum computing algorithms are potentially revolutionary. They suggest a way to solve some problems more quickly and more accurately than conventional computers ever could. But out in the real world of prac... » read more

System Bits: Sept. 25


Schottky diodes: One 2D material equation to rule them all Specifying the right materials for the heterostructure of 2D Schottky diodes—which consist of a metal touching a semiconductor—means designers have to wade through sometimes conflicting theoretical models to select materials. “It is not uncommon to see a model, whose underlying physics fundamentally contradicts with the physical ... » read more

Quantum Computing Becoming Real


Quantum computing will begin rolling out in increasingly useful ways over the next few years, setting the stage for what ultimately could lead to a shakeup in high-performance computing and eventually in the cloud. Quantum computing has long been viewed as some futuristic research project with possible commercial applications. It typically needs to run at temperatures close to absolute zero,... » read more

System Bits: April 3


Investigating the human brain for quantum computation potential While much has been made of quantum computing processes using ultracold atoms and ions, superconducting junctions and defects in diamonds, researchers are questioning if this could be performed in human brains. In fact, UC Santa Barbara theoretical physicist Matthew Fisher has been asking this question for years. And now as scient... » read more

Toward Defining Qubits


Quantum computing, by many accounts the future of high-performance computing, will be blazing fast, state-dependent, and it will require extremely cold operating temperatures. But beyond some general areas of agreement, comparing progress made by companies or different research groups is confusing. What's missing is a simple nomenclature to define some of the basic technology used in quantum... » read more

System Bits: Aug. 1


Quantum Computing Takes A Step Forward UCLA physicists have developed a technique for measuring and controlling the energy differences of electron valley states in silicon quantum dots, which they view as a key component of quantum computing. Joshua Schoenfield, a UCLA graduate student and one of the paper's authors, explained that "an individual qubit can exist in a complex wave-like m... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 21


Harvesting energy from multiple sources Researchers from the University of Oulu in Finland found a particular type of perovskite, KBNNO, has the right properties to extract energy from multiple sources simultaneously. While perovskites are particularly known for their use as solar cells, certain minerals in the perovskite family show piezoelectric and pyroelectric (harvesting energy from ... » read more

What’s Next For Transistors


The IC industry is moving in several different directions at once. The largest chipmakers continue to march down process nodes with chip scaling, while others are moving towards various advanced packaging schemes. On top of that, post-CMOS devices, neuromorphic chips and quantum computing are all in the works. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these technologies with Marie Semeri... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 20


Removing quasiparticles from superconducting quantum circuits improves lifetime Given that an important prerequisite for the realization of high-performance quantum computers is that the stored data should remain intact for as long as possible, an international team of scientists at European interdisciplinary research institute Forschungszentrum Jülich has succeeded in making further improvem... » read more

Quantum Computing Breakthrough


An earlier series of articles on quantum computing discussed the differences between the gate logic model and the quantum annealing model. The gate logic model, like transistor logic, uses a limited number of “gates” to construct a general purpose computer, theoretically capable of solving any problem for which a suitable algorithm can be found. In systems designed around the gate logic mod... » read more

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