DARPA Funds Pitt Quantum Computing Center

Using today’s fastest computers, calculating the prime numbers of a 400-digit number would take longer than the age of the universe; using quantum computers, in theory, the calculation would take less than a second.

That promise of ultra-fast computing is why the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded a new University of Pittsburgh research center to develop the core technologies necessary to create quantum computers.

The five year, $5.8 million effort will fund the Center for Oxide-Semiconductor Materials for Quantum Computation, which will explore the core technology required for quantum computers: the quantum mechanical equivalents of the transistors and bits.

“Quantum computers are not simply faster computers,” said Jeremy Levy, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, who will direct the center. “They exploit the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics to enable staggering speedups of certain kinds of calculations.”

The daunting task of factoring numbers into primes forms the basis of the encryption schemes used on the Internet. Quantum computers, if they can be built, are powerful enough to crack the codes that protect the security of individuals, corporations, and government agencies on the Internet.

One way of thinking about how quantum computers work is that they are capable of massively parallel calculations. A classical bit can take on only two values, “0” and “1”. By contrast, a quantum bit can be in a superposition of both “0” and “1”. One hundred quantum bits can be in a superposition of 1030 distinct states.

The center is an inter-institutional international effort involving five universities and three national laboratories.

—John Fedele