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Category: computing – Page 500

Microsoft adds ‘systemd’ to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

Microsoft and Canonical have teamed up to add systemd support to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, allowing a larger number of compatible apps to be installed.

Systemd is a Linux software application that acts as the system and service manager for initializing daemons/services during the bootup of the operating system. Systemd also supports tools that allow Linux admins to easily manage and control these services after they have been started.

As systemd is responsible for launching all other services, it runs as the first process (PID 1) created by the Linux kernel on startup. All other initial startup services are then started and managed by systemd, as shown by the process tree below from Ubuntu.

‘Twisty’ photons could turbocharge next-gen quantum communication

Quantum computers and communication devices work by encoding information into individual or entangled photons, enabling data to be quantum securely transmitted and manipulated exponentially faster than is possible with conventional electronics. Now, quantum researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have demonstrated a method for encoding vastly more information into a single photon, opening the door to even faster and more powerful quantum communication tools.

Typically, quantum communication systems “write” information onto a photon’s spin . In this case, photons carry out either a right or left circular rotation, or form a quantum superposition of the two known as a two-dimensional qubit.

It’s also possible to encode information onto a photon’s orbital angular —the corkscrew path that light follows as it twists and torques forward, with each photon circling around the center of the beam. When the spin and angular momentum interlock, it forms a high-dimensional qudit—enabling any of a theoretically infinite range of values to be encoded into and propagated by a single photon.

Scientists Discover the Nearest Black Hole to Our Solar System Ever Found

Astronomers have recently found the nearest known black hole to our solar system. According to scientists, the black hole is 1,570 lightyears away and ten times larger than our sun.

Known as Gaia BH1, the research was led by Harvard Society Fellow astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA).

In addition, El-Badry worked with researchers from CfA, MPIA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA), the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Observatoire de Paris, MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and other universities.

‘Father of quantum computing’ wins $3m physics prize

A theoretical physicist who has never had a regular job has won the most lucrative prize in science for his pioneering contributions to the mind-bending field of quantum computing.

David Deutsch, who is affiliated with the University of Oxford the $3m (about £2.65m) Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics with three other researchers who laid the foundations for the broader discipline of quantum information.

Superconductor Breakthrough: Scientists Discover an Invisible Phenomenon

It may be possible to develop superconductors that operate at room temperature with further knowledge of the relationship between spin liquids and superconductivity, which would transform our daily lives.

Superconductors offer enormous technical and economic promise for applications such as high-speed hovertrains, MRI machines, efficient power lines, quantum computing.

Performing computation using quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement.

Dr. Ralph Merkle — Nanotechnology & Cryonics — Preserving Ourselves for the Future

Ralph C. Merkle is a computer scientist. He is one of the inventors of public key cryptography, the inventor of cryptographic hashing, and more recently a researcher and speaker of cryonics.

Videos in the talk: David Eagleman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5tZtYns6kE molecular nanotechnology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyZ9bFl_qg.

Filmed 2017/04/30

Turning a quantum advantage: IBM’s Jay Gambetta on seamlessly integrating quantum and classical computing

Companies and research labs across the globe are working towards getting their nascent quantum technologies out of the lab and into the real world, with the US technology giant IBM being a key player. In May this year, IBM Quantum unveiled its latest roadmap for the future of quantum computing in the coming decade, and the firm has set some ambitious targets. Having announced its Eagle processor with 127 quantum bits (qubits) last year, the company is now developing the 433-qubit Osprey processor for a debut later this year, to be followed in 2023 by the 1121-qubit Condor.

But beyond that, the company says, the game will switch to assembling such processors into modular circuits, in which the chips are wired together via sparser quantum or classical interconnections. That effort will culminate in what they refer to as their 4158-qubit Kookaburra device in 2025. Beyond then, IBM forecasts modular processors with 100,000 or more qubits, capable of computing without the errors that currently make quantum computing a matter of finding workarounds for the noisiness of the qubits. With this approach, the company’s quantum computing team is confident that it can achieve a general “quantum advantage”, where quantum computers will consistently outperform classical computers and conduct complex computations beyond the means of classical devices.

While he was in London on his way to the 28 th Solvay conference in Brussels, which tackled quantum information, Physics World caught up with physicist Jay Gambetta, vice-president of IBM Quantum. Having spearheaded much of the company’s advances over the past two decades, Gambetta explained how these goals might be reached and what they will entail for the future of quantum computing.

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