tom.bl*g

which is why I don't shoot myself

...just back from a lecture from the handsome (right) Dr. P. Oscar Boykin from UCLA. He's a fun guy (left), and smart. He was here presenting "Physics of Information and Computation: from Quantum Computing to Large Scale Engineering Systems". The abstract:

In this talk, I will discuss two fields of study where unexpected overlap with physics has resulted in exciting advances in understanding. The first is the area of computation. Quantum computing, first proposed by Richard Feynman in 1982, has evolved from purely theoretical principles to actual laboratory devices. The Schroedinger equation from quantum mechanics may be viewed as a law of computation, one which allows quantum computers to solve certain problems exponentially faster than their classical boolean cousins. The chief barrier to large-scale quantum computing is the physical process called decoherence, which destroys the fidelity of quantum systems. Fortunately, universal fault-tolerant quantum computation has been developed to help make quantum computing a reality. I will discuss a promising silicon-based architecture for fault-tolerant quantum computing. The second area is the statistical mechanics of large-scale systems. Just as quantum mechanics has given us insight into the fundamental rules of computation, statistical mechanics gives us tools to understand large-scale systems. Originally conceived to provide a statistical description of gases, statistical mechanics has recently been applied to large-scale engineering systems. I will discuss the rate-equation approach to modeling large interacting systems. Just as in physical systems, we use the microscopic interaction rules to derive macroscopic properties of the system. This approach can explain the power-law behavior of many real-world systems such as the Internet, scientific citation indices, and disease transmission networks, to name a few. I will discuss the solution of the percolation problem from physics, and discuss its application to the fault tolerance of large systems.

Dr. Boykin received his PhD from UCLA specializing in quantum mechanics, information theory and cryptography. His research interests include: complex networks, P2P computing, quantum fault tolerant computer architectures, quantum information theory, and engineering/computing/biological systems.

He also has a decent sense of design, if a somewhat subversive aethetic. After hearing a sir talk about "unitary transformations" and "power-law graph generation", it's pleasantly disconcerting to find webcam self-portraits.

We talked briefly about the coming arms race between quantum computers and quantum cryptography. Shor's O(n^2*log(n)) integer factorization algorithm is the only thing we currently know quantum computers can do much better than classical architectures. The advent of a quantum computer make mean nothing more than the destruction of classical cryptography.

Posted by Tom at April 21, 2004 12:43 PM