[HN Gopher] Qubit Transistors Reach Error Correction Benchmark
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       Qubit Transistors Reach Error Correction Benchmark
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2024-09-12 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | pechay wrote:
       | University of New South Whales!
        
         | xnx wrote:
         | *Wales
        
           | karlgkk wrote:
           | Didn't read the article, did you?
        
             | brutal_chaos_ wrote:
             | I think the article has been corrected. I read it after
             | seeing this comment and couldn't find whales while reading
             | nor with ctrl+f
        
               | deathanatos wrote:
               | It was: http://web.archive.org/web/20240911190011/https:/
               | /spectrum.i...
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | Misspelling aside, Mitchell and Webb have ruined me; any time I
         | hear the name of that state, I think of[1]
         | 
         | 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxKnFckhzUs
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Just like fashion, even scientific advances can go from advanced
       | looking back to retro
        
       | AlanYx wrote:
       | The linked article says that they've achieved "the baseline
       | necessary to perform error correction". With the stated error
       | rate, roughly how many physical qubits would be required to
       | produce one error-corrected logical qubit?
        
         | crdrost wrote:
         | So it can be as low as 3 if you're only concerned with some of
         | the noise, but if you're trying to correct both for bit flips
         | (0 exchanged for 1 and vice versa) and phase drift (0 + 1 being
         | exchanged for 0 - 1 and vice versa) then you need at least 5
         | physical qubits to create one logical qubit, see [wiki] for
         | details.
         | 
         | [wiki]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-
         | qubit_error_correcting_co...
        
         | Strilanc wrote:
         | The threshold is where you transition from needing infinite
         | qubits to make an error corrected logical qubit, to needing a
         | mere finite number. So... somewhere between 1 and infinity
         | (exclusive).
         | 
         | Actually, because "in theory there's no difference between
         | theory and practice but in practice there is", the number is
         | _probably_ still infinity. Like, if you look at figure 4 of
         | their paper [0], you can see one device of the three is well
         | above threshold at 1.5% error. They need sufficient quality
         | more consistently before a large system built out of the pieces
         | they are benchmarking would be below threshold.
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-024-02614-w/figures/4
        
       | jgeada wrote:
       | This is interesting, but what isn't mentioned is how long these
       | devices can hold coherence (see
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_qubit and
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence)
       | 
       | All existing QC approaches have two fundamental limitations:
       | error rate and coherence time. You can decrease error rate
       | through error correction, but that comes at the cost of adding
       | gates and/or storage to replicate the QC state, but that causes a
       | decrease in coherence time. I have not seen even a theoretical
       | framework allowing both to be increased simultaneously.
        
         | amirhirsch wrote:
         | I will bet $2048 that a quantum computer will not factor
         | RSA2048 by 2048.
        
           | kurthr wrote:
           | I would not bet against you, but I suspect any advances will
           | be made very quickly and that could happen any time in the
           | next 25 years.
           | 
           | Even at 0.001% risk is far too much to take. I'd certainly
           | make the $0.02 bet for those odds.
        
             | almostgotcaught wrote:
             | > I would not bet against you
             | 
             | So you don't think it'll happen by 2048
             | 
             | > but I suspect any advances will be made very quickly and
             | that could happen any time in the next 25 years.
             | 
             | Um 2024 + 25 = 2049
        
         | Strilanc wrote:
         | > _I have not seen even a theoretical framework allowing both
         | to be increased simultaneously._
         | 
         | The threshold theorem [1], showing this can be done in
         | principle, was proven more than a decade ago.
         | 
         | But you don't have to believe the theory anymore, there's
         | experiments now! Last month the google quantum computing team
         | published an experiment [2] showing memory error rates
         | (including decoherence) getting twice as good as a surface code
         | was grown from distance 3 to distance 5, and twice as good
         | again going from distance 5 to distance 7. The logical qubit's
         | coherence time was longer than the coherence times of the
         | physical qubits it was built out of.
         | 
         | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_theorem
         | 
         | [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13687
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | Ok let's say I have two entangled electrons. How do I get one to
       | first transistor and second to second transistor?
        
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