[HN Gopher] IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor
___________________________________________________________________
IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor
Author : ag8
Score : 216 points
Date : 2021-11-16 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.ibm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.ibm.com)
| rbanffy wrote:
| IBM has been making the coolest-looking (and coolest)
| computers... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0glxDw700g
| ag8 wrote:
| It's crazy that a lot of the freezers they use, that can get
| temperatures down to a few millikelvin, are commodities at this
| point. You could go and buy one if you wanted to for $50k!
| kranke155 wrote:
| Amazing!
| baq wrote:
| > IBM Quantum System Two is designed to work with IBM's future
| 433-qubit and 1,121 qubit processors.
|
| what's the smallest _useful_ (as in, 'non-toy', or maybe 'worth
| buying time on') quantum computer?
| krastanov wrote:
| If you are a researcher from another field that just wants to
| contract out the computation of a numerical solution to some
| chemistry problem infeasible on a classical supercomputer, a
| million "physical" qubits is a fairly reasonable guestimate.
|
| If you are a quantum computation person developing near term
| applications, you probably would already start getting excited
| with a 100 (sufficiently long-lived) qubits.
|
| The "sufficiently long-lived" is the problematic part. Every
| lab has its own bespoke figure of merit (quantum volume, CLOPS,
| fidelities, etc). It is basically impossible to compare devices
| without being a researcher in the field for now. But at some
| point a novel drug or material will be developed thanks to a
| quantum computer and then we should really get excited about
| renting time on these devices.
| PeterisP wrote:
| What near term applications would be possible with just a 100
| long-lived qubits?
| sz4kerto wrote:
| For example routing algorithms used to change railroad
| traffic in case of a problem with a junction or track.
| krastanov wrote:
| With long-lived ones, gosh, a ton. When you hear a
| researcher talk about "logical qubit" or less formally
| "long-lived qubit" they mean a reliable abstract
| computational component. When we talk about "physical
| qubits" we mean the unreliable real implementations like
| the one from this article. A rough rule of thumb is that
| you need a 1000 physical qubits to make one logical qubit.
|
| With 100 logical qubits (i.e. 100k physical qubits), you
| can start thinking about running chemistry simulations on
| the edge of what is possible with classical supercomputers.
| That is what I am excited about. There are also
| optimization problems, and some pretentious claims about
| quantum machine learning, which I am certain would be fun,
| but I am not as excited about.
|
| With 100 physical qubits, you can start testing non-trivial
| control schemes, circuit compilations, error correction
| methods, and many other building blocks.
| mchusma wrote:
| Is it accurate to say the primary use of this is likely to
| design further quantum computers?
| krastanov wrote:
| In a way, yes. I usually call such devices "technology
| demonstrators". But I am certain there would be researchers
| offended by such a trivialization of their work.
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| Yeah the R&D that goes into this is mainly part of the
| longer term effort to make increasingly large quantum
| computers.
|
| In case you meant it the other way: the number of qubits
| here is still far too small for any real world application,
| including for simulations that would help design larger
| chips.
| [deleted]
| snarkypixel wrote:
| A real random number generator, this is basically the "hello
| world" on a quantum computer.
| cgearhart wrote:
| Kinda depends on what you want to use it for. If you want to
| simulate a physical system then you need at least as many
| qubits as the system has (and an understanding that such a
| simulation will have terrible noise). If you want to do
| something "useful" like run Shor's algorithm to factor large
| encryption keys then it would take millions of qubits and
| quantum error correction.
|
| To me the significance of this kind of increase in number of
| qubits is that many detractors of quantum computing had argued
| we'd never even reach this point, so I am slightly more
| optimistic that we'll eventually reach the scale required for
| reliable abstract computations.
| xxpor wrote:
| Why 433 and 1121? In classical computers, everyone knows why a
| lot of things are done in powers of 2. Is there a different
| base number useful for quantum computation that I don't know
| about (for example, is this an integer multiple of a specific
| sin/cos value)?
| krastanov wrote:
| Not really. For this particular device they are laying out
| the physical qubits in some geometric lattice constrained by
| where they can put traces for microwave inductors and
| capacitors, and it just happens that this is the convenient
| size at which to try to build the lattice.
| bnjemian wrote:
| It depends on your use case. By some measure, the Google
| collaboration that demonstrated a time crystal was a practical
| quantum advantage in the space of condensed matter research.
| But in that space, _practical_ means validating theory with
| experiment. That 's a _much_ lower bar for a quantum advantage
| than, say, showing that you 've implemented a quantum algorithm
| that can, with high statistical likelihood (e.g. an error rate
| of 1/10e5), provide fleet routing solutions for a logistics
| company that are 10% more efficient than any known classical
| routing algorithm.
| Decabytes wrote:
| I wonder how fast quantum computers are progressing. Like are we
| seeing similar increases in performance that we saw with silicon
| computers back in the 60s->Now? Or is it slower due to the
| intense cooling we need to give them?
| mattwilsonn888 wrote:
| Where does this sit on the "applicably breaking secure classical
| cryptography" spectrum?
| krastanov wrote:
| Many years away. A good guestimate is that you need 1M physical
| qubits factor numbers fast.
|
| Also, there is classical public-key cryptography (i.e.
| encryption algorithms that run efficiently on today's classical
| computers) that is not susceptible to quantum computers. And
| symmetric cryptography has never been susceptible to quantum
| computers.
| saalweachter wrote:
| So if we draw an exponential curve from 53 to 127 qubits,
| we're looking at 13 doublings or about 2 decades?
|
| Neat!
| cgearhart wrote:
| It's completely irrelevant to that problem. Breaking crypto
| requires quantum error correction, which we think requires
| thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of physical qubits
| per logical qubit. And the operations of the computation
| require many more logical qubits than just representing the
| target value.
|
| It's still gonna be awhile. But this is still pretty
| interesting because a lot of the detractors of quantum
| computing thought there was strong evidence that we'd never
| even manage to get this far. So it seems _slightly_ more likely
| that large scale abstract quantum computation is feasible.
| bnjemian wrote:
| Gidney and Ekera have you covered:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749
|
| Short answer, this probably won't even register as a pitstop on
| the technical pathway.
| StLCylone wrote:
| There are probably entities saving encrypted data right now for
| when that day arrives. Brings up many interesting lines of
| thought beyond "is it breakable right now?"
| krastanov wrote:
| Does it really though? Every secure system design pretty much
| assumes that the cryptographic standard will be broken in a
| few decades. Is there really any secret today that would be
| problematic if made public 30 years in the future? And that
| would not have been made public by some other method anyway?
| Maursault wrote:
| > Is there really any secret today that would be
| problematic if made public 30 years in the future?
|
| Sure. For one, that all the major earthquakes in the last
| 30 years, resulting tsunamis, destruction and loss of life,
| were manmade and intentionally caused by, say, Nabisco.
| Also, it would be a little shocking to the public if it
| were revealed there are no humans left, only alien-hybrids.
| krastanov wrote:
| Any idea where one can find qubit lifetimes and gate fidelities?
| The classical RF engineering behind controlling that many qubits
| is certainly great, but it is hard to get excited about the
| "quantumness" without these figures of merit.
| _8091149529 wrote:
| You can create a free account at IBM Quantum and peek at the
| latest calibration data there.
|
| Edit: Only a fraction of the qubits of the 127 qubit system
| were calibrated when I looked.
| one_off_comment wrote:
| Aw, they couldn't stuff one more in there to get a power of two?
| (I know it doesn't really matter for qubits, but still.)
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Reminds me of computing history with vacuum tube computers the
| size of a room. Even if the actual hardware isn't practical
| today, the lessons learned will still apply in the future.
| [deleted]
| davidw wrote:
| Very press-releasey, which I guess is fair given that it is,
| indeed, a press release. I'd love to hear more context from
| people knowledgeable in the field.
| adrian_mrd wrote:
| As someone who knows little about quantum computing, what is the
| significance of 127-qubits? (as opposed to classical computing's
| 128 bits, as a reference)
| klyrs wrote:
| Thus far, only D-Wave has truly scalable control over their
| qubits. They accomplished that by moving to an entirely
| different computational regime. Until gate-model efforts find a
| solution to scalable control, every "we built a bigger chip"
| announcement is a milestone in microwave engineering.
| krastanov wrote:
| Nothing. It is just how many they were able to manufacture and
| control reliably. Probably were aiming for some power-of-two
| number but had a couple of defects.
| space_fountain wrote:
| As someone who is very much a lay person, my understanding is
| the qubitsness of a quantum computer is closer to the ram
| capacity of a classical computer than anything
| tcgv wrote:
| Computational power for quantum computers goes as 2^n, where n
| is the number of qubits, so unlike classical computing this
| machine should be orders of magnitude superior to Google's
| 53-quibit Sycamore.
|
| If you wanna learn more about the subject, a couple of years
| back I wrote a introduction to quantum computing for
| programmers which you may find useful:
|
| - https://thomasvilhena.com/2019/11/quantum-computing-for-
| prog...
| 7373737373 wrote:
| What does "computational power" mean though? Which specific
| problem can these systems solve that classical computers
| cannot, or more effectively?
| tcgv wrote:
| Roughly, computational power = number of operations per
| cycle.
|
| Classical computers can only perform a number of operations
| per cycle linearly proportional to the amount of hardware
| architecture available (ex: one core, two cores, quad-
| core). Quantum computers can take advantage of
| superposition and entanglement to, given some restrictions,
| perform multiple operations per cycle, proportional to
| "two" to the power of the number of qubits.
| bnjemian wrote:
| That's not quite it. The power of a QC comes from
| modeling an exponentially large probabilistic state space
| using entanglement and superposition. The operations
| performed by a QC are also different, they can be analog
| (arbitrary rotations), but circuit depths (i.e. the
| number of operations) are still expected to be
| polynomial.
|
| The difference is that the probabilistic state space uses
| probability amplitudes, which are complex valued and can
| be positive or negative, allowing for constructive and
| destructive interference over the probabilities tied to
| each state. Orchestrate the right kind of interference,
| and for some problems, you have an algorithm that outputs
| a solution to that problem with (relatively high
| probability) in time that, depending on the problem, may
| be exponentially faster. Examples of those problems
| include prime factorization/discrete logarithms (Shor's
| algorithm) and ones in quantum simulation (hence the
| interest in QC by chemists, physicists, etc.)
| tcgv wrote:
| Thanks for detailing. I was explaining in laymen terms,
| using less technical details, with some reservations
| ("roughly" and "given some restrictions").
|
| > Orchestrate the right kind of interference, and for
| some problems, you have an algorithm that outputs a
| solution to that problem with (relatively high
| probability) in time that, depending on the problem, may
| be exponentially faster.
|
| Exactly. Given some restrictions, it's possible to
| implement algorithms that are equivalent to performing an
| exponentially large amount of classical operations per
| "cycle".
|
| > Examples of those problems include prime
| factorization/discrete logarithms (Shor's algorithm)
|
| Indeed. I provide an implementation of the Deutsch-Jozsa
| algorithm [1][2] based in my own quantum computing
| simulator that I linked in my blog post (in the original
| comment) to address this.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Jozsa_a
| lgorith...
|
| [2] https://github.com/TCGV/QuantumSim/blob/master/Tcgv.Q
| uantumS...
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Can it run doom though?
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Can you flip qbits with rowhammer?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| For the first time ever, the answer appears to be no. A truly
| unprecedented machine.
| relaunched wrote:
| Qubits? Wanna impress me? Tell me about the great strides you've
| made in fault tolerance.
| Thaxll wrote:
| IBM is dead change my mind.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Tangential question, what are the areas of technology where we
| can expect to see substantial progress or breakthroughs within
| 2030, i.e. what are the most exciting areas to follow and look
| forward to? Here's my list:
|
| - Nuclear fusion (Helion, ZAP, TAE, Tokamak Energy, CFS,
| Wendelstein).
|
| - Self-driving cars.
|
| - New types of nuclear fission reactors.
|
| - Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship).
|
| - Supersonic airplanes (Boom).
|
| - Solid state batteries.
|
| - Quantum computing.
|
| - CPUs and GPUs on sub-5nm nodes.
|
| - CRISPR-based therapies.
|
| - Longevity research.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I hate to tell you, but your list looks like it came straight
| out of the 1970's:)
|
| - Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship).
|
| - Supersonic airplanes (Boom).
|
| Been there, done that.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Delivery drones: Wing, Amazon, Zipline, Volansi, etc.
|
| Synthetic fuels.
| teryyy wrote:
| Synthetic meat of all kinds, ARM based processors, deep
| learning + AI, agtech/vertical farming/etc.
| api wrote:
| I'd say fusion is a sleeper. You still have that stupid "30
| years away and always will be" meme but there is real progress
| being made. Fusion would completely change the world, though
| not overnight because it would take another decade or so before
| it would advance enough to be cost competitive.
|
| I'm semi-optimistic about space flight and longevity. I think
| Starship will fly, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of its
| most ambitious specs get dialed back a bit. I'll be somewhat
| (but not totally) surprised if the "chopsticks" idea works.
|
| We will probably see aging-reversal to some limited extent
| within 10-20 years, but the effect will probably be more to
| extend "health span" than add that much to life span. (I'll
| take it.)
|
| I'll add one not on the list: the use of deep learning to
| discover theories in areas like physics and math that have not
| occurred to humans and maybe are not capable of being found by
| ordinary human cognition.
|
| Wildcard, but plausible: detection of a strong extrasolar
| biosphere candidate using JWST or another next-generation
| telescope. Detection would be based on albedo absorption
| spectra, so we wouldn't know for sure. Talk of an interstellar
| fly-by probe would start pretty quickly.
|
| I wouldn't list sub-5nm as "far out." We will almost definitely
| get sub-5nm. AFAIK 3nm is in the pipeline. Sub-1nm is "far out"
| and may or may not happen.
| paxys wrote:
| Sadly I'd also qualify most of these as things that consumers
| are overly excited about but will never reach their expected
| potential (at least in our lifetimes) due to technological
| limits. Same as flying cars, 3D TVs, 3D printing, household
| robots, holograms, AR glasses.
| kingcharles wrote:
| 3D TVs will come of age once autostereoscopic displays reach
| the right level of quality. After being blown away by my
| first glimpse of a display in around 1998 I fully expected
| them to be useable years ago. I guess we might still be
| another "10 years" away.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy
| Hamuko wrote:
| I really doubt that there's going to be huge desire for 3D
| TVs at any point. People can already look at video on a 2D
| display and interpret 3D visuals from it. And if you want
| to be fully immersed in something, maybe you want VR
| instead.
| gfodor wrote:
| AR glasses will hit a wall but passthrough AR will be
| converged on rapidly. Starting 2022
| oezi wrote:
| Any particular insight why 2022?
|
| Hololens 2 has shown that it isn't so easy to advance the
| field.
|
| I don't think an Apple device is forthcoming or likely to
| leapfrog.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > Any particular insight why 2022?
|
| Facebook, Apple and others are releasing their first AR
| glasses then.
| gfodor wrote:
| Passthrough AR isn't glasses AR, and is much more likely
| to be rapidly made capable. Lynx-R launches in Q1, and
| Meta's and Apple's headsets will likely use passthrough
| AR next year.
|
| https://lynx-r.com/
| oezi wrote:
| I definitely hope for something novel with video see-
| through HMDs as they used to call them in 2002 [1] when I
| last worked on them. Latency wasn't solved last I checked
| and viewpoint offset is still an issue that throws users
| off.
|
| [1] https://static.aminer.org/pdf/PDF/000/273/730/ar_tabl
| e_tenni...
| gfodor wrote:
| - Psychadelics
|
| - VR/AR (photonic override, more specifically)
|
| - Fundamental physics (unlocked by tech)
| tlrobinson wrote:
| Can you elaborate on "photonic override"? Googling that
| phrase pretty much just returns more HN comments and tweets
| by you :)
| gfodor wrote:
| A hardware/software proxy that governs all photons you see.
| walleeee wrote:
| This is desirable?
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| I would argue that most of the items on this list can be
| subdivided into two types of hype.
|
| short term hype (real advances that will happen in 1-2 years,
| but won't matter by 2030, because they are just a generational
| iteration)
|
| Over-hyped far-future research. (things where the possibilities
| have yet to be brought down to earth by the practical limits of
| implementing them broadly / cost effectively) When these things
| do happen, they tend to be a bit of a let-down, because they
| don't actually provide the promised revolutionary changes.
| These things basically have to be over-hyped in order to get
| the necessary funding to bring them to reality.
|
| Of the examples you have, I am only really excited about
| CRISPR, and to a lesser extent commercial spaceflight, and new
| nuclear. These have promise IMO, but I also don't expect them
| to be decade defining.
|
| Personally I don't think we know what the next breakthrough
| will be yet. I expect it to take us very much by surprise, and
| start out as something unthreatening which then grows to a
| disruptive size / scale.
| baby wrote:
| I'm starting to get some fatigue about quantum computer news, and
| I just dismiss them now. If there really is a valuable
| breakthrough, everyone will be talking about it for months non-
| stop so I won't miss it.
| bawolff wrote:
| That's kind of like saying, i'm tired of political news - if we
| all actually die in a nuclear holocaust armegedon it will be
| hard to miss.
| vezycash wrote:
| It's not like political news. It's like new battery tech
| news.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Actually, what you just said is the equivalent of saying, "We
| just developed a quantum computer that allows us to solve not
| just every physical world question we have, but every
| metaphysical one as well."
|
| Since you're literally comparing the end of most life on
| Earth, I think its fair for me to compare the development of
| a computer that provides limitless understanding.
|
| They're both equally ridiculous, in other words.
| bnjemian wrote:
| I feel like a nuclear war is a much likelier (yet _very_
| low probability) event than your computational straw man.
| dekhn wrote:
| This is exactly correct. The moment something important happens
| in quantum computing the community will recognize it as such.
| In the meantime most of us are just waiting for somebody to do
| something interesting that couldn't really have been solved
| (possibly approximately) on classical systems.
| xondono wrote:
| I can avoid thinking that as a species, QC is a bad investment. I
| think we're trying just too early, like Charles Babbage. Great
| idea but the world doesn't have the tech required.
|
| I think that if they are honest with themselves, most researchers
| know they won't see the day QC are a practical reality, but
| everyone is trying to become the "father of QC".
| neolefty wrote:
| I wonder if, at the same level of technology, quantum and
| classical computers end up performing similarly -- do you need
| exponentially less noise for more qubits? If so, it seems
| similar to me to requiring exponentially more classical compute
| power to equal it, and they kinda end up equivalent?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I hear what you are saying, but maybe on the way to the moon,
| we can invent microwave ovens
| snarkypixel wrote:
| > The best way to predict the future is to create it
| xondono wrote:
| Yeah, but trying to build things too early makes them
| meaningless.
|
| Babbage designed a computer that had essentially no impact,
| because it could not be built, and by the time the tech was
| around we had better ways to build computers.
|
| As a global effort, it may be wiser to shift focus to other
| things more achievable, and try QC again in 2100 (IDK, just
| some random future time).
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Isn't the problem, though, that you don't really know what
| is, and isn't, achievable until you actually get there and
| have the benefit of hindsight?
| rwmj wrote:
| Interesting that the number of qubits is approximately doubling
| every year according to the article.
| sgt101 wrote:
| well Google Sycamore (53 qubits) arrived in 2019, and it's 2021
| now - so 2 years (being generous).
| zoover2020 wrote:
| How do we call this 'law'?
| bnjemian wrote:
| A quanta article (prematurely in my view), tried to dub this
| Neven's law: https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-nevens-law-
| describe-quan...
| thehappypm wrote:
| Schrodinger's shrinking cat
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Moore's law?
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Perhaps: Moore's Second Law
| Panoramix wrote:
| So what kind of qubits is IBM going for? transmons?
| filereaper wrote:
| >'Eagle' is IBM's first quantum processor developed and deployed
| to contain more than 100 operational and connected qubits. It
| follows IBM's 65-qubit 'Hummingbird' processor unveiled in 2020
| and the 27-qubit 'Falcon' processor unveiled in 2019.
|
| I guess I missed last years announcement of the 65 qubit one.
|
| So okay we have a 127 qubit machine, what did they _do_ with it
| afterwards?
|
| The Q3 financials were released so this article can't have been
| released to pump up the stock price.
| zardo wrote:
| > So okay we have a 127 qubit machine, what did they do with it
| afterwards?
|
| Characterize it's performance, review what they've learned, and
| start on the next design.
|
| We're either thousands of qubits, or a major theoretical
| breakthrough in error correction away from using a quantum
| computer for something other than learning about building
| quantum computers.
| krastanov wrote:
| In the months after such an announcement you can expect
| articles with various attempts at an application to pop up on
| arxiv. I am saying "attempts at an application", not because
| the papers are not impressive, rather because the devices are
| still too small and noisy to excite anyone but researchers in
| the field. As a researcher in the field I am certainly very
| excited, because the figure of merit I care about have been
| drastically improved and this reinforced my belief that we will
| have a device solving classically-infeasible chemistry
| simulations soon (anything between 5 and 15 year ;)
| dekhn wrote:
| As much as I would love to see quantum computers contributing
| to quantum chemistry, it's unclear that having more
| computation would magically solve any actual practical real
| world applied problem in chemistry.
|
| I assume you're saying classically infeasible to refer to the
| O(n*7) scaling of some QM basis functions?
| krastanov wrote:
| Your assumption is correct, and your cautiousness is
| warranted. I do expect the polynomial complexity to become
| better with future improvements in algorithms. Either way,
| it is on us fanboys to make devices that fulfill these
| claims.
| dekhn wrote:
| Best of luck. having my skepticism disproved by the QC
| folks woudl be a major win, but it's not something I'd
| spend my time on. I think it makes more sense to improve
| existing codes to run as fast as possible on the biggest
| supercomputers we have, although even that isn't super
| useful because, as far as I can tell, better chemical
| simulations don't lead to better applied science in the
| field of chemistry.
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| Would you have examples of such simulations at hand? Or links
| describing some of them? I know next to nothing about quantum
| computing but I've always loved a good infeasible problem.
| krastanov wrote:
| Feynman's 1981 "Simulating Physics with Computers" is one
| of the first mentions of how it is (naively) exponentially
| expensive to store on a classical computer the quantum
| state of something with n degrees of freedom (a molecule
| made of multiple atoms). He suggests (vaguely) the notion
| of a quantum computer. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&
| q=simulating%20physics%2...
|
| It is less known that a Russian scientist made similar
| remarks at the same time.
|
| This "Science" news blurb pops up on google as an intro as
| well https://www.science.org/content/article/quantum-
| computer-sim... . Although it makes you laugh when you
| notice that the principle was suggested in 1981, formalized
| in the mid 90s, initial experimental successes in late 00s,
| and today we are barely simulating 3 atom molecules. In our
| defense, it was a 100 years between Babbage, passing
| through Turing, and getting to something like ENIAC. And a
| few more decades before the PC.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Yuri Manin is "way less well known"? I just spit my
| coffee out when I read that.
| krastanov wrote:
| I apologize, what I was attempting to say was "here it is
| way less known that a scientist in Russia made the same
| observations at the same time". I will edit my comment.
| gigel82 wrote:
| No they didn't; there is no such thing as a quantum computer or a
| quantum processor outside of theoretical papers. I know I'll be
| downvoted by saying that (like I was last time) but that doesn't
| change facts; they have a random number generator that is capable
| of generating a lot of very random numbers... cool, cool, cool.
| dougSF70 wrote:
| I am all in for down votes. I am not a physicist but the cost
| of cooling must astronomical for the output you get. CF. When
| autonomous vehicle technology gets released into production it
| is likely they won't make your car look like its wearing a
| dunce's hat whereas when quantum computers enter production we
| will still need mK temperatures for them to operate. The cost
| of cooling will burn the planet up further, just so someone can
| crack a SHA-256 encrypted password in seconds...random numbers
| indeed.
| krastanov wrote:
| There are technologies that would not need the 15mK operating
| temperatures, they are just in their infancy.
|
| The most interesting applications of quantum computing have
| little to do with encryption or breaking codes. Chemistry and
| optimization problems are much more exciting.
|
| SHA-256 is a hash, not an encryption algorithm. And quantum
| computers have nothing to contribute to reversing hashes or
| breaking symmetric encryption.
| bnjemian wrote:
| If you added one word of qualification - _practical_ quantum
| computer or quantum processor - this would actually be a
| reasonable position to argue.
| gigel82 wrote:
| No, I mean in the real sense, there is no actual quantum
| processor anywhere in the world (unless some secret
| organization actually built something amazing and is hiding
| it).
|
| Not a single quantum logical gate exists that actually
| behaves as described in the theory, let alone circuits of
| quantum gates that do even the most basic of computation.
| Actually, I'll take that one step further and say that no one
| has produced a single qubit (actual logical qubit as
| described in the theoretical literature), these 127 (if that)
| are what they call "physical qubits" or what you and me would
| call chaotic sources of uncontrolled entropy (i.e. random
| number generators).
|
| I'm not saying quantum computing in the physical world is
| impossible, I'm just saying no one has accomplished it (yet).
| krastanov wrote:
| Like the parent comment, your absolutism seems
| unreasonable. A wave-plate is a darn-near-perfect single
| qubit gate for a dual-rail encoded photonic qubit. It is
| just that we can not really generate photons on demand in a
| scalable way. Hence agreeing both with "there are some
| small noisy unreliable quantum computers" and with "there
| are no scalable useful practical quantum computers".
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Quantum Computers sitting in their cryogenic chambers are such
| works of art, stacks of giant brass plates and hundreds of heat
| pipes (or coolant pipes? liquid helium I suppose) twisted and
| coiling throughout the structure hanging like some steampunk
| chandelier (why do they hang from above anyway?) EDIT: changed to
| a few direct links to pics: [0][1][2]
|
| The esoteric design reminds me of the Connection Machine blog
| posted the other day, "to communicate to people that this was the
| first of a new generation of computers, unlike any machine they
| had seen before." [3]
|
| I'm curious what they do with these prototypes once they are
| obsoleted in a matter of months, are the parts so expensive they
| tear it down to reuse them? Or will the machines be able to go on
| tour and stand in glass cases to intrigue the next generation of
| engineers? I know it had a tremendous effect on me to stand in
| front of a hand-wired lisp machine at the MIT museum.
|
| [0] https://img-s-msn-
| com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AANs...
|
| [1] https://img-s-msn-
| com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AANs...
|
| [2]
| https://static.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20191023&t=2&...
|
| [3] https://tamikothiel.com/theory/cm_txts/
| krastanov wrote:
| The pipes you mentioned are microwave conduits (for various
| control signals).
| jjoonathan wrote:
| 0.141" semi-rigid coax, diameter of champions.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > 0.141" semi-rigid coax, diameter of champions.
|
| I wonder if we measure it more precisely we'll get to
| something closer to 1.4142135623730950488...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Thanks! Is my assumption of liquid helium running somewhere
| correct? I figure that's the only way to reach the
| temperatures required (single digit kelvins, no?)
| zackbloom wrote:
| It's much colder than that, single-digit millikelvin. They
| use He-3/4 dilution refrigerators [1]. Getting things cold
| and electromagnetically-quiet enough that the quantum state
| doesn't collapse is a big challenge in the field.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator
| krastanov wrote:
| It is even worse than single digit Kelvin.
|
| Liquid Nitrogen with pumping: 40 K for a few thousand
| dollars.
|
| Run of the mill Liquid Helium: 4 K for tens to hundreds of
| thousands of dollars.
|
| But for these devices you need 15mK which is reachable only
| if you mix two different isotopes of Helium and pump the
| mixture into vacuum. Such a device is up to 1M$ and more.
|
| And the insides of that device are in vacuum (actually, air
| freezing into ice on top of the chip can be a problem). The
| brass is basically the heat conductor between the chip and
| the cold side of your pumped He mixture (which is *not*
| just sloshing inside the whole body of the cryostat where
| the chips are).
|
| Another reason you do not want the He sloshing around is
| because you will be opening this to make changes to the
| device and do not want all the extremely expensive He3 (the
| special isotope you need for the mixture) to be lost.
| cashsterling wrote:
| FWIW... small DR's are under 400k USD. The big ones are
| ~1M USD or more.
| robin_reala wrote:
| What's a DR? Something refrigerator?
| [deleted]
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Dilution refrigerator. They are the type of refrigerator
| used to chill quantum computing devices. The wikipedia
| article has a pretty good description of how they work.
| It took me a few reads to understand it!
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| My antivirus client won't let me open that second link, claims
| some kind of malicious activity, didn't look into the details.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Strange, it is a personal blog with literally no javascript
| (just checked my network tab), might be worth investigating
| what your antivirus has against it. It's a very good read, so
| just in case your antivirus is friendly with archive.org: htt
| ps://web.archive.org/web/20211113093602/https://tamikothi...
| rackjack wrote:
| I look forward to the day we can look back at these "quantum
| chandeliers" with nostalgia, like we look back on those
| massive, room-sized mainframes today.
| loxias wrote:
| I can't wait to be in the vintage quantum computing club,
| where we build working replicas of the "quantum chandeliers"
| with more modern and stable parts, and tinker with them as
| functional room decoration.
|
| Related, the DEC PDPs certainly look stylish!
| [deleted]
| alpineidyll3 wrote:
| They hang because they sit at the bottom of dilution
| refrigerators.
| dhosek wrote:
| Cray supercomputers were also aesthetically beautiful machines:
|
| https://cdn.britannica.com/11/23611-050-81E61C8A/Cray-1-supe...
|
| So happy to be able to find a picture of the wirewrap inside:
| https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/e2/d2/47/e2d2...
| function_seven wrote:
| To this day, whenever I hear the term "supercomputer", I can
| only visualize the Cray. I don't want to know what the latest
| supercomputer looks like, because I suspect it's just another
| boring bunch of rack aisles. Maybe with a snazzy color end-
| cap or blue LEDs on the doors.
|
| Bring back the impractical, space-eating circular design! I
| don't care about space efficiency. It's supposed to look
| cool.
| mcpherrinm wrote:
| The LEDs are green!
|
| https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6F80/production
| /...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53147684
|
| And they do have a snazzy coloured endcap...
|
| https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/spVSO7_2vryY6neSXK1JfQ--~
| B...
|
| https://www.engadget.com/japan-fugaku-
| supercomputer-01312169...
| noir_lord wrote:
| I have a picture of a cray been serviced as an A2 framed
| print on my living room wall, it predates the missus which is
| why it was on the living room wall ;)
| eb0la wrote:
| The computer history museum has a CRAY you can see very close
| ( https://computerhistory.org/ ). Worth the visit.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| What's that picture of what looks like an exploded CPU package
| on IBMs site? Is that metaphorical or is that really what the
| processor looks like? It looks small and not-chandelier like.
| ruuda wrote:
| They hang from the ceiling because they use evaporative cooling
| (the high-energy particles escape, and the low-energy particles
| remain in the bucket), each lower stage a bit cooler than the
| one above it.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Also because it looks cool, which is only appropriate for a
| cooling system.
| Iv wrote:
| Unless I am missing something, I believe that these pictures
| are at 99% the cryogenic system.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Whoa, that is so cool! I thought the Eischer esque machine in
| Devs was mostly Hollywood fluff but it absolutely looked almost
| just like that.
| wishinghand wrote:
| The TV show DEVS has a computer that looks a lot like those
| first three links. I always thought their prop was a set
| designer's imagination run wild, not actually based in what
| quantum computers look like.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Amazing images, nothing that would look out of place in the
| Villa Straylight.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Someday when quantum computers are the size of dust particles
| and we're surrounded by them there'll be some version of a
| steampunk subculture that values decorating their homes with
| these ancient beautiful and laughably incapable devices.
|
| Maybe in 30 ~ 50 years or so.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I can't help but think of turning them into horrible sounding
| organs.
| danbolt wrote:
| I'm _very_ excited to configure DNS blocking for the quantum
| dust particles trying to serve me advertisements in my home.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| At least analytics won't be able to tell if you looked at
| the ad or not
| beambot wrote:
| I would gladly decorate my home with one. They're beautiful
| in their own way.
| jes wrote:
| For me, the name 'Eagle' reminds me of the book "Soul of a New
| Machine" by Tracy Kidder. That book is about the design and
| bring-up of another new (at the time) computer system, the Data
| General MV/8000, which was also code-named Eagle.
|
| I wish IBM great success with their work.
|
| edit: Clarified that the MV/8000 project was also code-named
| Eagle.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Haven't read that yet but I read "House" by him recently and it
| was quite good
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a fantastic book, highly recommended. I have gifted it
| tens of times by now, I used to buy them by the box :)
| jes wrote:
| I enjoyed both Soul of a New Machine and House.
|
| A scene from the former that I remember. The principle
| architect of the machine (Tom West) is talking with Edson
| DeCastro (CEO of Data General) and is asking for a new
| oscilloscope to help with the bring-up of the machine.
|
| DeCastro tells West, essentially, he's not authorizing a new,
| expensive scope. West, flabbergasted, asks why. DeCastro
| lowers his head, peering over the top of his glasses at West,
| and says "Because scopes cost money, and engineering overtime
| is free."
|
| I'm telling this from memory and some of the details are
| wrong. I guess I should go get a Kindle copy of the book and
| re-read it. :-)
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I read the book when it was new. Just a handful of years
| later I graduated college and got a job at a start up. One
| of the guys who interviewed me and ended up in the office
| directly across from my cubicle was Carl Alsing.
|
| A few months later someone mentioned that Carl was in "Soul
| of a New Machine" (Carl was the seasoned hand who was in
| charge of the "microkids", the green engineers responsible
| for writing the microcode).
|
| I re-read the book. When Kidder first introduces Alsing he
| sums him up in a few sentences, and damn if he wasn't spot
| on. Later in the book is an entire chapter about Carl and
| his unorthodox work habits, and again, it all was so on the
| mark with what I had learned of Carl firsthand that it gave
| the rest of the book a great deal of credibility.
| ghaff wrote:
| House is his other book that clicked with me given I had
| bought a fixer-upper at the time I read it. I really liked
| both books but none of the topics of his other books really
| clicked with me.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Anyone who wants to evoke the pioneering spirit of the moon
| landing(tm) uses the name. I worked on a project codenamed
| "Eagle" just earlier this year.
| osipov wrote:
| surprisingly not a word about quantum supremacy
| xondono wrote:
| Because we all know "Quantum Supremacy" is just another
| marketing term, like "Militar grade encryption".
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _It heralds the point in hardware development where quantum
| circuits cannot be reliably simulated exactly on a classical
| computer._
| cgearhart wrote:
| I mean, that was practically already the case with the Google
| Sycamore processor. IBM claimed that they could simulate the
| 53-qubit circuit in something like 24 hours on a
| supercomputer (with a bunch of bespoke optimizations), but a
| 54-qubit version would have been completely classically
| intractable. We didn't need to get to 100+ qubits, and those
| came out before now.
| intvocoder wrote:
| Google's claim was widely criticized for being an
| unimportant and uninteresting benchmark, making the quantum
| s*premacy claim nonsense.
|
| Later research proposes that an exascale-level
| supercomputer could simulate it in "dozens of seconds".
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03011
| krastanov wrote:
| This is a funny comparison.
|
| "Here is this device with 50 components. It can be
| simulated by a device with 1000000000000 components, so
| we should not really be impressed."
| bnjemian wrote:
| Truth. Not to mention the stunning asymmetry in energy
| usage. At a minimum, if we can solve an equivalent
| computational problem using a quantum computer with
| orders of magnitude less energy than a classical HPC, QC
| merits consideration. The carbon footprint of data
| centers is far from negligible.
|
| Computational advantages aren't the only types advantages
| we should care about.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| When it costs a few dollars to make the latter and tens
| of millions to make the former then it's fair to not be
| super impressed.
| krastanov wrote:
| You are off by 9 orders of magnitude at least. The
| classical super computer in these comparisons costs 0.3
| Billion dollars and this does not count the many
| Trillions that took to develop the tech.
|
| Even on this measure, the (useless for now) quantum tech
| wins.
| bawolff wrote:
| That's such a stupid criticism. Quantum supremacy is an
| arbitrary benchmark by definition.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Maybe because China has that now?
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Is there evidence to your claim, or are you just partaking in
| the incredibly banal "China is going to overtake us in ____"
| doomsday porn?
| gre wrote:
| Quantum supremacy just means that a quantum computer is
| better than a classical computer at solving some (toy) task,
| not that one country's quantum computer is better than
| another country's.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| Can't wait to install Windows on this!
| da_chicken wrote:
| I prefer the old standby responses:
|
| > Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of _these_
|
| Or:
|
| > But can it run Crysis?
| mindcrime wrote:
| This is IBM, it will only run OS/2.
| dvh wrote:
| Will this system be finally able to factor number 35 using Shor?
| IBM tried and failed in 2019
| rain1 wrote:
| It is incredibly dishonest of them to post this without any
| details about the noise parameters of the system.
|
| When reading "127-qubit system" you would expect that you can
| perform arbitrary quantum computations on these 127 qubits and
| they would reasonably cohere for at least a few quantum gates.
|
| In reality the noise levels are so strong that you can
| essentially do nothing with them except get random noise results.
| Maybe averaging the same computation 10 million times will _just_
| give you enough proof that they were actually coherent and did a
| quantum computation.
|
| The omission of proper technical details is essentially the same
| as lying.
| scrubs wrote:
| I hope US esp. but also our EU scientist friends eat everybody
| else's lunch. Better tech. Better science. Better math. Better
| algos. And, yes, let's get those details right too. Noise
| management is a key discriminator between POC and practical.
| andrewla wrote:
| Basically little more than having a bathtub and claiming you've
| built a computer that does 600e23 node fluid dynamic
| calculations. But a lot more expensive.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I haven't read anything on this one yet, but your analogy
| fits Google's "quantum supremacy" paper really well, I likes
| it.
| bnjemian wrote:
| Ugh, the point is a fine one but it appears it has to be
| made:
|
| Validation of experimental theory through the
| characterization and control of an entire system is not the
| same as building the same system and simply seeing the
| final state is what you expect. The latter is much easier
| and says very little about your understanding.
|
| Here's an analogy: Two people can get drunk, shack up for
| the night, and 9 months later have created one of the most
| powerful known computers: A brain. Oops. On the flip, it's
| unlikely we'll have a full characterization and
| understanding of the human brain in our lifetimes - but if
| we ever do, the things we'll be able to do with that
| understanding will very likely be profound.
| andrewla wrote:
| My reply was glib but I think in principle correct. The
| idea of a strictly controlled system in the NISQ domain
| to validate quantum supremacy in theory is an interesting
| approach, but it feel deceptive to me because this
| 127-qubit computer cannot in fact factor 127-bit numbers
| with Shor's algorithm or anything like that.
|
| The accomplishment is more akin to creating a bathtub
| with 127 atoms and doing fluid dynamic simulations on
| that, which is a much harder problem in many ways than
| doing the 6e25 version of the experiment. But it is very
| questionable to me whether any claims of quantum
| supremacy retain validity when leaving the NISQ domain
| and trying to do useful computations.
|
| Gil Kalai's work in the area [1] continues to be very
| influential to me, especially what I consider the most
| interesting observations, namely that classical computers
| only barely work -- we rely on the use of long settlement
| times to avoid Buridan's Principle [2], and without that
| even conventional computers are too noisy to do actual
| computation.
|
| [1] https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2021/11/04/face-to-
| face-talks... is a recent one
|
| [2] https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/buridan.pdf
| amelius wrote:
| I guess they should show that they have achieved quantum
| advantage:
|
| The Chinese did show it some time ago:
|
| https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202110/1237312.shtml
| inasio wrote:
| It's particularly jarring given that IBM came up with the
| concept of quantum volume [0]...
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_volume
| kvathupo wrote:
| With the caveat that the paper is from a competitor that I
| like, this benchmark paper [1] makes me inclined to disregard
| this result. See figure 1.
|
| __EDIT:__ whoops wrong figure, just read section iv or see the
| first figure here [2]
|
| [1] - https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.03137
|
| [2] - https://ionq.com/posts/october-18-2021-benchmarking-our-
| next...
| samaman wrote:
| Also another problem: you now have 2^127 output values leaving
| the quantum processor. If you're using a hybrid quantum
| algorithm that requires classical processing as well (which are
| most algos used today), you'd need more than a yottabyte of
| RAM. We can get around this problem by storing all 2^127 pieces
| of output data into other data types that compress the total
| size, but if you genuinely are trying to use all 2^127 outputs,
| you'd still need to do some pretty intensive searching to even
| find meaningful outputs. I guess this is where Grovers search
| could come really handy, right?
| piannucci wrote:
| You don't get the entire wave-function as output; the wave-
| function is not observable. Different measurements might
| reveal information about certain components of the state, at
| least probabilistically, but those same measurements will
| always destroy some information. See the No-cloning Theorem.
| samaman wrote:
| Right, but you would still get the basis states for all 127
| qubits right? And that would be 2^127 output states. Yes,
| you could do some sort of search maybe to find highest
| probability outputs only, but if you needed every output
| value for a follow up algorithmic step (like in VQE for
| ground state prep wherein you keep using previous results
| to adjust the wavefunctions until ground is reached), then
| wouldn't it be a bit tough to use?
| krastanov wrote:
| You have 127 qubits that you measure and you end up with
| a classical string of length 127. Sure, that classical
| string, the measurement result, could have ended being
| any of 2^127 possible different values into which the
| wavefunction collapses. But that is no different from
| saying that there are 1^1024 possible states that a 1kB
| of classical RAM can be in. It is not related to the
| (conjectured) computational advantage that quantum
| computers have.
| samaman wrote:
| Right okay makes sense...guess I am just too used to NISQ
| and having to run many thousands of shots for high enough
| fidelity..if all you wanted was one output, then yeah one
| classical string is easy enough, thanks
| [deleted]
| vbtemp wrote:
| It seems like IBM has blown their credibility so many times. As
| soon as I saw IBM mentioned in the lead of the title, I knew
| what was to follow is almost entirely actual-content-free
| marketing spin.
| mathattack wrote:
| Welcome to IBM. Is Quantum the new Watson?
| krylon wrote:
| > The omission of proper technical details is essentially the
| same as lying.
|
| Welcome, child, to the beautiful/"special" world of marketing!
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Be gone fetus, for there has always been honest marketing.
| It's just harder to find, sadly.
| lazide wrote:
| If it's below the noise floor, how do we separate it from
| 'accidental (or incompetent?) honest marketing'?
| akomtu wrote:
| Marketing is the art of lying, basically. Distract attention
| from significant flaws, advertise insignificant advantages,
| let customers build a wrong mental model.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| This is fascinating to me! Quantum computing is such an
| incredible frontier. But I suppose it will mostly be used to
| decrypt all the currently un-decryptable internet traffic being
| archived at the Utah Data Center [1]. But, maybe it will also be
| used for something good for humanity, too.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
| krastanov wrote:
| The cryptography uses are fairly boring in my opinion. We
| already have classical cryptography techniques which are not
| susceptible to quantum computers.
|
| On the other hand, being finally able to fully simulate large
| molecules with significant quantum effects (not possible even
| on classical super computers) would be amazing.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I like this talk... and especially around the 10 minute mark.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/craig_costello_in_the_war_for_info...
| czbond wrote:
| I like how their emails are on the article like "hey, I'm a quant
| C.S. that works at IBM. Hire me somewhere great!"
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Obligatory PSA: Scott Locklin's "Quantum computing as a field is
| obvious bullshit":
|
| "When I say Quantum Computing is a bullshit field, I don't mean
| everything in the field is bullshit, though to first order, this
| appears to be approximately true. I don't have a mathematical
| proof that Quantum Computing isn't at least theoretically
| possible. I also do not have a mathematical proof that we can or
| can't make the artificial bacteria of K. Eric Drexler's nanotech
| fantasies. Yet, I know both fields are bullshit. Both fields
| involve forming new kinds of matter that we haven't the slightest
| idea how to construct. Neither field has a sane 'first step' to
| make their large claims true.
|
| .....
|
| "quantum computing" enthusiasts expect you to overlook the fact
| that they haven't a clue as to how to build and manipulate
| quantum coherent forms of matter necessary to achieve quantum
| computation. A quantum computer capable of truly factoring the
| number 21 is missing in action. In fact, the factoring of the
| number 15 into 3 and 5 is a bit of a parlour trick, as they
| design the experiment while knowing the answer, thus leaving out
| the gates required if we didn't know how to factor 15. The actual
| number of gates needed to factor a n-bit number is 72 x n^3; so
| for 15, it's 4 bits, 4608 gates; not happening any time soon".
|
| [1]: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-
| comput...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-16 23:00 UTC)