UCSB physicists claim to have a von Neumann architecture implemented for quantum computing.

Far be it from me to denigrate what they achieved but I have to take issue with the marketing.

They keep using that “von Neumann” word. I do not think it means what they think it means. In a strict sense a quantum computer cannot possibly implement a von Neumann architecture. Peter Hines a theoretical computer science researcher wrote a nice paper about just that question not too long ago.

I think this an example of a somewhat careless appropriation of a term that has a well-defined meaning in computer science.

In my mind this is rather problematic, because sloppy adoption of classical CS terms does nothing to illuminate the fundamental difference of quantum computing and is destined to just add confusion.

Update:

The UCSB researchers talk about a “Quantum von Neumann” architecture in their original paper. The “Quantum” unfortunately got dropped in many news releases.