Poor Man's Qubit: First Hardware of a Probabilistic Computer Now Available

Quantum issues may now be solvable without the use of a quantum computer. New research by engineers at Purdue University and Tohoku University in Japan, has unveiled the researchers' new hardware -- a probabilistic computer -- which can solve quantum problems without using any quantum computers. The probabilistic computer with its new hardware has fundamental units -- known as p-bits -- which can perform a calculation that usually only a quantum computer could solve. The study was published this week in Nature. The new device built by the engineers will be the basis for building probabilistic computers.