Quantum computers, should they be realized one day, will inevitably make errors. Therefore, they need special error correcting mechanisms. The most important part of it, a so-called Toffoli gate, has now been realized by ETH scientists with superconducting circuits.
Photograph of the superconducting 3-qubit-processor mounted on and connected to a high frequency printed circuit board. (Image: Quantum Device Lab, ETH Zurich)
In a classical computer there happens one error in about ten quadrillion (1016) operations. The goal in quantum computing is to have less than one error in 10.000 (104) operations. Lars Steffen, PhD student in Wallraff´s group and co-author of the publication says that this is a reasonable goal, since errors in quantum computation can never be avoided. «If you want to do complicated quantum information processing, these errors need to be corrected», Andreas Wallraff said.
ETH-professor Andreas Wallraff and his team could now realize a Toffoli gate using a chip with superconducting circuits and could verify its functionality with the newest methods. The results of the study were now published in «Nature».
Torsten Hoefler, currently Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, USA, has been appointed as Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) of Computational Science at ETH Zurich.
Torsten Hoefler is internationally regarded as one of the leading young scientists in the field of high-performance computing. At the University of Illinois, he is currently involved in the development of one of the world´s most efficient supercomputers. His research interests focus on system design, programming and efficiency analysis. Torsten Hoefler will provide the Department of Computer Science, the research focus “Scientific Computing and Simulation” and the CSCS (Swiss National Supercomputing Centre) with important stimuli.
According to Torsten’s blog he had the choice between “Juelich [as] *the* top supercomputing center in Europe and ETH [as] *the* top research university in (mainland) Europe (with people like Einstein as alumni)”. Torsten also adds “It was a very hard choice and I took some time to make it final”. Finally he concludes that “Zurich is probably one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and definitely one of (if not the) most expensive city . Public transit is just a dream, I believe one really doesn´t need a car around the city”.
We are happy to welcome Torsten to HPC in Switzerland!
While the peak performance and energy efficiency of computing hardware are constantly growing, the development of fast scientific software is experiencing an important paradigm shift. Efficient algorithm implementations face rigid constraints about memory layouts, access patterns and FLOP/Byte ratios.
Diego Rossinelli (ETH Zurich) discusses the design of wavelet-based adaptive solvers for compressible flow simulations that run effectively on multi- and many-core architectures.
An animation produced by Swiss scientists about the Reversing Magnetic Field of Planet Earth is one of the 16 selected animations for SC11 Scientific Visualization Showcase.
The visualization showcase relies on competitive selection visualizations with a goal to have an event and place at the conference that collects and showcases state-of-the-art scientific visualizations that relate to HPC problems. The Scientific Visualization Showcase will be presented at SC11 in a museum/art exhibit-style environment so that attendees can experience and enjoy the latest in science and engineering HPC results expressed through state-of-the-art visualization technologies.
The visualization about the Reversing Magnetic Field of Planet Earth has been created by Jean M. Favre (CSCS), Jon Rotvig (ETH Zurich) and Andrew Jackson (ETH Zurich).
The magnetic field generated in the fluid metallic core of planet Earth is shown. Numerical simulations of the dynamo mechanism, such as this one, exhibit polarity reversals, whereby the north pole moves by 180 degrees; this mimics the behaviour documented many times within the geological record. Our simulation solves the equations of momentum transfer, heat transfer and electrodynamics in an electrically conducting and rapidly-rotating fluid at each point in time. High temperatures in the central part of the core drive thermal convection. The total simulation is equivalent to approximately 40,000 years on Earth. Our movie shows the magnetic field lines that enter and exit the core. High magnetic field strength is shown by red and yellow colours, and lower strengths by blue. On each field line we place a small compass needle with red and white ends, which orient itself in the direction of the field.
Dr. Daniele Passerone is leading the group of Computational Chemistry in the Nanotech and Surfaces Laboratory at EMPA. At the user day, he presented a poster on “Nanoscience surfaces: from substrate to adsorbate”.
Andrey Sheyko, PhD student in the group of Professor Andrew Jackson in the Institute for Geophysics at ETH Zurich presents his poster on “Equatorial dynamics and secular variation in rapidly rotating convection-driven numerical dynamo”.
. Public transit is just a dream, I believe one really doesn´t need a car around the city”.