From DKos: Carly Fiorina skrooed the pooch on quantum computing
Mon Oct 05, 2015 at 01:02 PM PDT
Forget HP ... What Carly did to Lucent was Unforgivable
There has been a great deal of talk about Carly's disastrous reign at
HP. Her acquisition of multiple companies to boost her numbers and
large numbers of layoffs while she got millions in perks and benefits is
well documented. But her tenure at Lucent was a bigger disaster.
In 1996, Bell Laboratories, the research arm at AT&T, was spun off and became Lucent. At the time, Bell Labs was, along with Lawrence Livermore, the top rated research laboratory in the United States and arguably the world. But Lawrence Livermore was doing primarily research for the defense industry. Bell Laboratories' research was more general - and more cutting edge. One of the most promising areas of their research was the quantum computer. I did my masters thesis on quantum computing in 2000.
I posit that Carly Fiorina is a big reason we don't have a quantum computer to this day.
In 1996, Carly Fiorina was appointed president of Lucent's Consumer Products sector. She
opted to focus on the telecommunications arena, with a joint venture with Royal Philips Electronics. Her goal was to bring the joint venture to the top of the telecommunications industry in technology, distribution and brand recognition. To do this, she did two things. She redirected funding from hard research to telecommunications and began "patent churning."
Patent churning happens when a company focuses on the number of new patents, not the quality or depth of research. When researchers request funding for new projects, they provide the company with an analysis that includes a timeline, needed funding, risk assessment and estimates of the benefits realized with success. When a company begins patent churning, most projects with timelines longer than 3-6 months, high funding and a measurable risk of failure are turned down. Thus, real research into the unknown gets choked out and replaced with lightweight projects that are pretty well known. There is no money allocated toward higher risk ventures that could lead to technological breakthroughs. The many patents Lucent registered under Carly were slight variations on known technology.
In 1980, Yuri Mann had proposed the idea of a quantum computer. In 1981, Richard Feynman proposed a model of what could become a quantum computer. In 1994, Peter Shor, of Bell Labs, discovered an algorithm, known as Shor's algorithm, that allowed a quantum computer to factor large integers quickly. This algorithm solved the heart of the quantum computing problem. His algorithm was simulated in C. The simulation was performed to prove the concept and show the direction a new language would need to take to successfully run a quantum computer. To this day, one of the impediments to having a quantum computer is the lack of a language that can handle ambiguity.
In 1996, Bell Laboratories, the research arm at AT&T, was spun off and became Lucent. At the time, Bell Labs was, along with Lawrence Livermore, the top rated research laboratory in the United States and arguably the world. But Lawrence Livermore was doing primarily research for the defense industry. Bell Laboratories' research was more general - and more cutting edge. One of the most promising areas of their research was the quantum computer. I did my masters thesis on quantum computing in 2000.
I posit that Carly Fiorina is a big reason we don't have a quantum computer to this day.
In 1996, Carly Fiorina was appointed president of Lucent's Consumer Products sector. She
opted to focus on the telecommunications arena, with a joint venture with Royal Philips Electronics. Her goal was to bring the joint venture to the top of the telecommunications industry in technology, distribution and brand recognition. To do this, she did two things. She redirected funding from hard research to telecommunications and began "patent churning."
Patent churning happens when a company focuses on the number of new patents, not the quality or depth of research. When researchers request funding for new projects, they provide the company with an analysis that includes a timeline, needed funding, risk assessment and estimates of the benefits realized with success. When a company begins patent churning, most projects with timelines longer than 3-6 months, high funding and a measurable risk of failure are turned down. Thus, real research into the unknown gets choked out and replaced with lightweight projects that are pretty well known. There is no money allocated toward higher risk ventures that could lead to technological breakthroughs. The many patents Lucent registered under Carly were slight variations on known technology.
In 1980, Yuri Mann had proposed the idea of a quantum computer. In 1981, Richard Feynman proposed a model of what could become a quantum computer. In 1994, Peter Shor, of Bell Labs, discovered an algorithm, known as Shor's algorithm, that allowed a quantum computer to factor large integers quickly. This algorithm solved the heart of the quantum computing problem. His algorithm was simulated in C. The simulation was performed to prove the concept and show the direction a new language would need to take to successfully run a quantum computer. To this day, one of the impediments to having a quantum computer is the lack of a language that can handle ambiguity.
In 1996, Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, invented the quantum database
search algorithm. David P. DiVincenzo, from IBM, proposed a list of
minimal requirements for creating a quantum computer.
The realization of the quantum computer was in sight.
But in 1998, Fiorina began her policy of patent churning. The budget for quantum computing was eliminated, and those working on it had to find other work. In 1999, Fiorina left Lucent to HP, but the damage was done. While work on the quantum computer has continued, the team at Bell Labs, with their collaboration and their collective momentum, was gone. We will probably get a quantum computer eventually. But it will have been extensively delayed, and it may not be as elegant a solution as Bell Labs would have yielded.
Some people would prefer we not get a quantum computer. I won't go into the benefits and non-benefits of a quantum computer here. But I do lament the destruction of good research at the expense of Carly's obsession with padding the annual report. Her tenure at HP proves that she didn't learn from her management.
If she becomes president, you have to wonder what games she will play with our government to make thinks look good under her tenure while being destroyed long term.
The realization of the quantum computer was in sight.
But in 1998, Fiorina began her policy of patent churning. The budget for quantum computing was eliminated, and those working on it had to find other work. In 1999, Fiorina left Lucent to HP, but the damage was done. While work on the quantum computer has continued, the team at Bell Labs, with their collaboration and their collective momentum, was gone. We will probably get a quantum computer eventually. But it will have been extensively delayed, and it may not be as elegant a solution as Bell Labs would have yielded.
Some people would prefer we not get a quantum computer. I won't go into the benefits and non-benefits of a quantum computer here. But I do lament the destruction of good research at the expense of Carly's obsession with padding the annual report. Her tenure at HP proves that she didn't learn from her management.
If she becomes president, you have to wonder what games she will play with our government to make thinks look good under her tenure while being destroyed long term.
posted by Dot Calm @ 8:58 PM
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