[HN Gopher] Quantum Virtual Machine to accelerate research and l...
___________________________________________________________________
Quantum Virtual Machine to accelerate research and learning
Author : jedwhite
Score : 44 points
Date : 2022-07-19 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| fileyfood500 wrote:
| I just tried IBM Quantum Composer[1] after reading through this
| Colab and finding I didn't know enough about quantum circuits to
| do anything besides clicking play. Quantum Composer gave me a
| super simple drag and drop GUI for getting familiar with basic
| circuits/building blocks.
|
| I made it 20 minutes before having to look up a Bloch sphere
| (happens when you start experiments with 'S' and 'Z' blocks which
| add phase shifts). I don't directly use a lot of IBM products,
| and I had a great experience with this one!
|
| Link: https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/composer
| farmin wrote:
| I have often wanted to know if quantum computing is near or one
| of those technologies always 'just around the corner'. Should I
| commit some time to learning the basics so that I am one of the
| few with cross over knowledge of say quantum computing and
| agricultural data.
| refulgentis wrote:
| It's the 1950s for it. It's real, people use it, but it's more
| a toy and has some breakthroughs ahead of it to be at scale.
|
| Fwiw after following it closely for about 3 years now, I
| wouldn't speculatively load up on it. Even the theory of
| problems that could benefit from it, if it existed as scale,
| only has a few
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/quantum-compu...
|
| ^ This is a good intro that doesn't do much hand-wavy pop-sci.
| colordrops wrote:
| What types of problems are solvable now that this sort of infra
| is possible?
| [deleted]
| nawgz wrote:
| It seems pretty clear that a QVM isn't going to magically offer
| better performance than the underlying hardware. The main
| benefit I'd guess at as a layman would be that they can write
| more meaningful quantum logic now and run it somewhere while
| they wait for the real deal to scale
| colordrops wrote:
| Sorry, I'm referring to the actual quantum computing hardwarw
| that this is emulating. My question is poorly phrased
| considering the topic.
| summerlight wrote:
| There are several categories of computational problems
| where quantum computers will be able to solve at better
| computational complexity compared to classical computers.
| One famous example would be Shor's algorithm. It's
| considered to be a practical threat to many public key
| cryptography depending on integer factorization being hard.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| > Several decades ago, quantum computers were only a concept -- a
| distant idea discussed mostly in lecture halls. Flash forward to
| today, and the race is on to build fault-tolerant quantum
| computers and discover new algorithms to apply them in useful
| ways.
|
| Uhh, they're still a concept. Fast forward to today and that's
| why you only have a "quantum virtual machine" - more like quantum
| vapor ware.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Uhhh no they aren't, we have working quantum computers today
| abrichr wrote:
| From https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/28/1048355/quan
| tum-... :
|
| > The qubit systems we have today are a tremendous scientific
| achievement, but they take us no closer to having a quantum
| computer that can solve a problem that anybody cares about.
|
| -- Sankar Das Sarma, Distinguished University Professor,
| Condensed Matter Theory Center, Univ. of Maryland
|
| From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-
| bad-sc... :
|
| > Crazy headlines abound: "quantum computing will change life
| as we know it," "quantum computing will solve global
| warming," "Quantum computing will revolutionize science and
| industry," etc etc. These statements are not based on any
| research or reality at all, they are not even wishful
| thinking. The number of known quantum algorithms, which
| promise advantage over classical computation, is just a few
| (and none of them will "solve global warming" for sure). More
| importantly, exactly zero such algorithms have been
| demonstrated in practice so far and the gap between what's
| needed to realize them and the currently available hardware
| is huge, and it's not just a question of numbers. There are
| qualitative challenges with scaling up, which will likely
| take decades to resolve (if ever).
|
| -- Victor Galitski, Professor, Joint Quantum Institute, Univ.
| of Maryland
| magila wrote:
| Depends on how generously you define "working". No one has
| yet implemented even a single logical qubit.
| fortysixdegrees wrote:
| I'm going to use this to make AI to figure out the killer app for
| blockchain, then use the infinite funds I generate to build a
| fully self driving car.
| curiousgal wrote:
| in Rust or in Go?
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| Javascript obviously since the language itself operates in a
| quantum domain even when running on a deterministic x86/x64
| architecture.
| cybertronic wrote:
| Is there a term for always pointing out that something is over
| hyped? It's becoming a thing now
| [deleted]
| cridenour wrote:
| Me and my wife have been exploring the current state of quantum
| computing to apply it to procedural generation and games - I
| don't think we'll be able to create something we couldn't with
| classical computing, but just moving from a PRNG to what I always
| call "quantum chaos" is just fun.
| PcChip wrote:
| have a blog, or any writeups/screenshots/videos of your quantum
| chaos? I'm interested!
| thorum wrote:
| So this is a tool for developing and experimenting with quantum
| algorithms without needing access to an actual quantum computer.
| It runs in Colab and simulates the expected results on a regular
| computer. I don't know whether there are other existing tools in
| this space, but that seems really cool since it lets regular
| people explore the ideas behind quantum computing, and makes it
| faster for developers to iterate on algorithms.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Doesn't Amazon AWS already have this?
| yvdriess wrote:
| Not exactly new no. QC simulators have been in use since before
| the actual machine have. And even a schmuck like me has
| developed a QVM for a phd nearly a decade ago.
| https://github.com/yvdriess/qvm
|
| Their qvm is probably more accurately stimulating the exact
| machine behaviour of their hardware.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-19 23:00 UTC)