October 10, 2000 

SAN JOSE -- IBM Corp. here today announced significant breakthroughs in the emerging nanotechnology arena--a move that could pave the way for a new class of computing devices in the market.

Dr. Isaac Chuang, research scientist at IBM's Almaden Research Center.

Dr. Isaac Chuang, holds an electron quantum state computer.   The glass tube contains specially designed molecules that can solve some of the most difficult mathematical problems exponentially faster than a conventional computer.

The company has developed a small-scale quantum computer, based on microscopic nanotechnology, and it now plans to create larger computing devices in the future.

"We have recently developed a three [cube] bit quantum computer at IBM," said Robert Morris, vice president of personal systems and storage and the director of the Almaden Research Group at IBM Research today. "Two months ago, we had also developed a five [cube] bit quantum computer as well."

Still, there are some major hurdles to develop this technology, which promises to deliver microscopic devices that can process at speeds at 3,000 million of instructions per second (MIPS) or faster, Morris said.

"We are going to require an order of magnitude [of new technology] on the supply side," Morris said. "We are also worried about the production aspects. We are still making a [nanotechnology-enabled device] at one gate at a time. We don't know if we can put a quantum computer into production."

"Quantum computing begins where Moore's Law ends -- about the year 2020, when circuit features are predicted to be the size of atoms and molecules," says Isaac L. Chuang, who led the team of scientists from IBM Research, Stanford University and the University of Calgary. "Indeed, the basic elements of quantum computers are atoms and molecules."

Quantum computers get their power by taking advantage of certain quantum physics properties of atoms or nuclei that allow them to work together as quantum bits, or "qubits," to be the computer's processor and memory. By interacting with each other while being isolated from the external environment, theorists have predicted -- and this new result confirms -- that qubits could perform certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers.

The previous quantum computer contained five qubits -- five fluorine atoms within a molecule specially designed so the fluorine nuclei's "spins" can interact with each other as qubits, be programmed by radio frequency pulses and be detected by nuclear magnetic resonance instruments similar to those commonly used in hospitals and chemistry labs.

Using the molecule, Chuang's team solved in one step a mathematical problem for which conventional computers require repeated cycles. The problem is called "order-finding" -- finding the period of a particular function -- which is typical of many basic mathematical problems that underlie important applications such as cryptography.

While the potential for quantum computing is huge and recent progress is encouraging, the challenges remain daunting. IBM's five-qubit quantum computer is a research instrument. Commercial quantum computers are still many years away, since they must have at least several dozen qubits before difficult real-world problems can be solved.

"This result gives us a great deal of confidence in understanding how quantum computing can evolve into a future technology," Chuang says. "It reinforces the growing realization that quantum computers may someday be able to live up to their potential of solving in remarkably short times problems that are so complex that the most powerful supercomputers can't calculate the answers even if they worked on them for millions of years."

Chuang says the first applications are likely to be as a co-processor for specific functions, such as database lookup and finding the solution to a difficult mathematical problem. Accelerating word processing or Web surfing would not be well-suited to a quantum computer's capabilities.

The developments are still in the R&D stages, but IBM believes that the technology could bring the semiconductor, biotechnology, and other industries to the next level, he said.

Nanotechnology, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and related technologies are indeed emerging. MEMS are defined at the micron level by VLSI circuit processing techniques. Nanotechnology, which uses the molecular-scale processes of chemistry and living cells, is based on harnessing molecular interactions to set in motion processes that create some desired end configuration.

Nanotechnology promises to enable a whole range of new products in the pervasive-computing arena, including digital jewelry, computer-enabled watches, and other items, suggest experts.

Chuang presented his team's latest result at Stanford University at the Hot Chips 2000 conference, which is organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Computer Society. His co-authors are Gregory Breyta and Costantino S. Yannoni of IBM-Almaden, Stanford University graduate students Lieven M.K .Vandersypen and Matthias Steffen, and theoretical computer scientist Richard Cleve of the University of Calgary. The team has also submitted a technical report of their experiment to the scientific journal, Physical Review Letters.

Exactly a year ago (October 1999) I reported the first generation working prototypes of a Quantum Computer in these very pages in what was at the time, a significant breakthrough.

 In the words of Niels Bohr, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it!" Shocking indeed to find that quantum bits, or qubits, can be both 1 and 0 at the same time! Or that it can be impossible to eavesdrop on a message sent as qubits!

Scientists are exploiting such quantum weirdness to build quantum logic gates as a step towards a super-powerful quantum computer. In other work they are inventing ultra-secure cryptography systems in which data is coded in the quantum states of individual photons. More about NMR and Quantum Computing is here. If this frantic pace keeps up, we will soon have wearable computers that are a million times faster, which are perfectly secure, than anything currently available.


History of Quantum Computing 
When quantum computers were first proposed in the 1970s and 1980s (by theorists such as the late Richard Feynmann of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.; Paul Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois; David Deutsch of Oxford U. in England., and Charles Bennett of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.), many scientists doubted that they could ever be made practical. But in 1994, Peter Shor of AT&T Research described a specific quantum algorithm for factoring large numbers exponentially faster than conventional computers -- fast enough to break the security of many public-key cryptosystems. Shor's algorithm opened the doors to much more effort aimed at realizing the quantum computers' potential. Significant progress has been made by numerous research groups around the world.

Chuang is currently among the world's leading quantum computing experimentalists. He also led the teams that demonstrated the world's first 2-qubit quantum computer (in 1998 at University of California Berkeley) and 3-qubit quantum computer (1999 at IBM-Almaden). The order-finding result announced today is the most complex algorithm yet to be demonstrated by a quantum computer.

How a Quantum Computer Works 
A quantum particle, such as an electron or atomic nucleus, can exist in two states at the same time -- say, with its spin in the up and down states. This constitutes a quantum bit, or qubit. When the spin is up, the atom can be read as a 1, and the spin down can be read as a 0. This corresponds with the digital 1s and 0s that make up the language of traditional computers. The spin of an atom up or down is the same as turning a transistor on and off, both represent data in terms of 1s and 0s.

Qubits differ from traditional digital computer bits, however, because an atom or nucleus can be in a state of "superposition," representing simultaneously both 0 and 1 and everything in between. Moreover, without interference from the external environment, the spins can be "entangled" in such a way that effectively wires together a quantum computer's qubits. Two entangled atoms act in concert with each other -- when one is in the up position, the other is guaranteed to be in the down position.

The combination of superposition and entanglement permit a quantum computer to have enormous power, allowing it to perform calculations in a massively parallel, non-linear manner exponentially faster than a conventional computer. For certain types of calculations -- such as complex algorithms for cryptography or searching -- a quantum computer can perform billions of calculations in a single step. So, instead of solving the problem by adding all the numbers in order, a quantum computer would add all the numbers at the same time.

To input and read the data in a quantum computer, Chuang's team uses a nuclear magnetic resonance machine, which uses a giant magnet and is similar to the medical devices commonly used to image human soft tissues. A tiny test-tube filled with the special molecule is placed inside the machine and the scientists use radio-frequency pulses as software to alter atomic spins in the particular way that enables the nuclei to perform calculations.

Right from its birth in 1900, quantum mechanics has had an unreal, too-strange-to-be-true quality to it. Dealing as it does in probabilities, waves, interference patterns and tunneling (the ability to go from one place to another without passing through the in-between space), quantum mechanics just doesn't have the intuitive certainty of conventional Newtonian mechanics — the system that uses such tangible qualities as force, acceleration and mass to predict the discernable behavior of matter and machines.

Despite its strangeness, however, an understanding of quantum mechanics has been absolutely central to today's high-tech, wired world. Without it, computers, television, satellites, telephones and most other modern gadgets would probably not be as sophisticated and plentiful as they are now. IBM scientists have played important roles in many quantum mechanical developments, but none is as far out and improbable — yet as potentially important — as the development of quantum information techniques.

An outgrowth of seminal IBM Research studies in the 1970s on the energy-efficiency limits of the very act of computation, quantum information theory currently predicts that small bits of matter that are both exquisitely intertwined yet absolutely isolated are capable of such incredible feats as: absolutely foolproof protection of data transmissions (quantum cryptography) exponentially powerful and exceedingly rapid computation and data searching (quantum computing), in its most science-fiction-like (but at least theoretically possible) example, the ethereal "quantum teleportation" of the essence of matter — its quantum states — from one location to another.

IBM researchers and other scientists around the world have been making impressive progress in demonstrating the first elementary aspects of quantum information. Hopes are high that quantum cryptography can be commercialized. The prospects for developing any practical quantum computers or teleporters are unknown at this time. Isolating and controlling quantum states to the degree necessary would be substantial achievements. But when dealing with quantum mechanics, it's never a sure bet to dismiss the improbable.

EAST FISHKILL, N.Y., October 10, 2000 
IBM today announced the largest capital investment in its history, including plans to build the world's most technologically advanced chip-making facility in East Fishkill, New York.

The new facility will combine -- for the first time anywhere -- IBM chip-making breakthroughs such as copper interconnects, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and low-k dielectric insulation on 300mm (12-inch) wafers. IBM also expects to be the first chip-maker to mass produce semiconductors at line-widths below .10 microns, more than 1000 times thinner than a human hair. The new facility is planned to begin operation in the second half of 2002, bringing up to 1000 new jobs to the region as it reaches full production in early 2003.

The $2.5 billion plant is part of a total $5 billion capital investment plan to support IBM's growing semiconductor business around the world. In addition to the New York facility, the company is expanding chip-making capacity in IBM's existing Burlington, Vermont and Yasu, Japan facilities, as well as in Altis Semiconductor, a joint venture between IBM and Infineon located in Corbeil-Essonnes, France. IBM is also expanding organic and ceramic chip packaging operations worldwide.

"The world of e-business is driving a massive build-out of the infrastructure of computing and communications," said Lou Gerstner, IBM Chairman and CEO. "That, in turn, drives demand for critical technical components like chips. Demand is white-hot in three critical segments -- chips for big servers, chips to power the explosion in Internet access devices and chips in the networking equipment that ties everything together. That's why today's announcement is important -- important for our industry, our customers and our employees."

IBM is leading the way to a new era in chip-making, which is driven by demand for innovative technologies to fuel advanced products, such as networking gear, pervasive computing devices and high-performance servers.

"Increasingly, high-tech companies are turning to IBM for their high-technology," said John Kelly, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Technology Group. "The semiconductor industry has never been stronger and demand for our technologies has never been greater. We're investing billions of dollars across the globe to meet the long-term technology needs of our customers."

With its unprecedented combination of advanced technology and production capability, IBM's 300mm plant in East Fishkill is expected to offer new opportunities for employees and local communities, bringing jobs and added investment to the region.

"IBM's new East Fishkill facility represents the single largest capital investment in New York's history, sending a powerful message around the world that New York State -- and in this case Upstate New York -- can compete and win its share of new jobs," said NY State Governor George Pataki. "Building on the growth of Silicon Alley in New York City and our Semi-NY program, this investment in the Hudson Valley is a perfect example of how government and industry can work together to establish New York as a home to high-tech industry. I thank Lou Gerstner for once again linking IBM's destiny and success to New York State's."

IBM has been granted more US patents than any other company for the last seven consecutive years; chip and packaging technology from the IBM Microelectronics Division have contributed more than one third to that IBM patent total.

IBM was the first to introduce the use of copper in place of aluminum in chip wiring, as well as the use of SOI transistors and low-k insulation materials to enhance the performance and lower the power requirements of chip designs. The company has been the leader in the drive toward smaller and smaller chip circuitry, combining the function of multiple chips onto a single "system-on-a-chip." This technology has established IBM as the number one worldwide supplier of custom ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips.