[HN Gopher] Willow, Our Quantum Chip
___________________________________________________________________
Willow, Our Quantum Chip
Author : robflaherty
Score : 573 points
Date : 2024-12-09 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| tombert wrote:
| Interesting; it might be time for me to load up a quantum
| simulator and star learning how to program these things.
|
| I've pushed that off for a long time since I wasn't completely
| convinced that quantum computers actually worked, but I think I
| was wrong.
| nick__m wrote:
| IBM has well structured learning material and a quantum
| simulator at https://learning.quantum.ibm.com/
|
| Also my almamater made the quantum enigmas series that is
| appropriate for high-school students (it also interesting if
| you have no prior knowledge about quantum computing)
| https://www.usherbrooke.ca/iq/quantumenigmas/ (it also use IBM
| online learning platform)
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| So one of the interesting comparisons between Quantum computing
| vs classical in the video: 5 mins vs 10^25 years. So are there
| any tradeoffs or specific cases in which the use cases for
| Quantum computing works or is this generic for "all" computing
| use cases? if later then this will change everything and would
| change the world.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| Its for a very, very, very narrow set of algorithms AFAIUI.
| antognini wrote:
| There are only certain kinds of computing tasks which are
| amenable to an exponential speedup from quantum computing. For
| many classical algorithms the best you get from a quantum
| computer is an improvement by a factor of sqrt(N) by using
| Grover's algorithm.
|
| The other tradeoff is that quantum computers are much noisier
| than classical computers. The error rate of classical computers
| is exceedingly low, to the extent that most programmers can go
| their entire career without even considering it as a
| possibility. But you can see from the figures in this post that
| even in a state of the art chip, the error rates are of order
| ~0.03--0.3%. Hopefully this will go down over time, but it's
| going to be a non-negligible aspect of quantum computing for
| the foreseeable future.
| pitpatagain wrote:
| It is specific to cases where a quantum algorithm exists that
| provides speedup, it is not at all generic. The complexity
| class of interest is BQP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BQP
|
| Also of note: P is in BQP, but it is not proven that BQP != P.
| Some problems like factoring have a known polynomial time
| algorithm, and the best known classical algorithm is
| exponential, which is where you see these massive speedups. But
| we don't know that there isn't an unknown polynomial time
| classical factoring algorithm and we just haven't discovered it
| yet. It is a (widely believed) conjecture, that there are hard
| problems solved in BQP that are outside P.
| nuz wrote:
| Every time this comes up people say they're not actually useful
| for ML. Is that true? And if not what would they be useful for
| christkv wrote:
| In principal NP complete problems is my guess.
| wazdra wrote:
| It is unknown whether quantum computing makes NP-complete
| problems easier to solve. There is a complexity class for
| problems that can be solved "efficiently" on using quantum
| computing, called BQP. How BQP and NP are related is unknown.
| In particular, if an NP-complete problem was shown to be
| solvable efficiently with Quantum Computing (and thus in
| BQP), this open (and hard) research question would be solved
| (or at least half of it).
|
| Note that BQP is not "efficient" in a real-word fashion, but
| for theoretical study of Quantum computing, it's a good first
| guess
| benbayard wrote:
| AFAIK, which is not much, I believe it is problems that you
| can turn in to a cycle. Right now we pull out answers from
| quantum computers at random, but typically do not know what
| the inputs were that got that answer. But if you can get the
| answers from the quantum computer to be cyclical you can use
| that symmetry to get all the information you need.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| breaking crypto, for one
| LampCharger wrote:
| No, a true quantum computer will not necessarily solve NP-
| complete (NPC) problems efficiently. Quantum algorithms like
| Grover's provide quadratic speedups, but this is insufficient
| to turn exponential-time solutions into polynomial-time ones.
| While quantum computers excel in specific tasks (e.g., Shor's
| algorithm for factoring), there's no evidence they can solve
| all NP-complete problems efficiently.
|
| Current complexity theory suggests that , the class of problems
| solvable by quantum computers, does not encompass . Quantum
| computers may aid in approximations or heuristics for NPC
| problems but won't fundamentally resolve them in polynomial
| time unless , which remains unlikely.
| vessenes wrote:
| Factoring. Reversing ECC operations. Decrypting all the data
| thought to be safely stored at rest in any non quantum
| resistant storage.
|
| I do think ai algorithms could be built that quantum gates
| could be fast at, but I don't have any ideas off the top of my
| head this morning. If you think of AI training as searching the
| space of computational complexity and quantum algorithms as
| accessing a superposition of search states I would guess
| there's an intersection. Google thinks so too - the lab is
| called quantum ai.
| jawns wrote:
| > It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs
| in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in
| a multiverse
|
| I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot
| of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion.
|
| Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing
| capacity from other universes for these calculations?
| gaze wrote:
| I'm upset they put this in because this is absolutely not the
| view of most quantum foundations researchers.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| the everettian view is absolutely not the view? i am not so
| sure.
|
| or you mean specifically the parallel computation view?
| gaze wrote:
| sorry -- the results don't add weight to one view or the
| other. The interpretations are equivalent.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| not metaphysically equivalent. also, i'm not so certain
| it will always be untestable. i would have thought the
| same thing about hidden variables but i underestimated
| the cleverness of experimentalists
| DennisP wrote:
| I think "experimentally equivalent" is what GP meant, and
| as of today, it holds true. Google's results are
| predicted by other interpretations just as well as by
| Everett. Maybe someday there will be a clever experiment
| to distinguish the models but just "we have a good QC" is
| not that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think you're arguing against a point i never made in
| any of my comments
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| In my opinion the "shut up and calculate" view is the most
| common among actual quantum computing researchers.
|
| Unsure about those working on quantum foundations, but I
| think the absence of consensus is enough to claim any view
| as absolutely not _the_ view.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i don't really view "shut up and calculate" or very
| restrained copenhagenism as a real view at all.
|
| i think if you were to ask people to make a real
| metaphysical speculation, majority might be partial to
| everett - especially if they felt confident the results
| were anonymous
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| I agree, but that kind of goes to my point:
|
| I believe the vast majority of researchers in quantum
| computing* spend almost no time on metaphysical
| speculation,
|
| *Well, those on the "practical side" that thinks about
| algorithms and engineering quantum systems like the
| Google Quantum AI team and others. Not the computer
| science theorists knee-deep in quantum computational
| complexity proofs nor physics theorists working on
| foundations of quantum mechanics. But these last two
| categories are outnumbered by the "practical" side.
| klipt wrote:
| Soon: "are alien universes slowing down _your_ internet?
| Click here to learn more! "
|
| Reminds me of the Aorist Rods from Hitchhikers' Guide to the
| Galaxy.
| rafram wrote:
| Well there has to be _some_ reason I 'm not getting the
| "gigabit" speeds I was quoted.
| duderific wrote:
| You were probably quoted "up to" gigabit speed. Which
| means anything from zero to gigabit is acceptable.
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| Credibility of the article plummeted when I got to that
| sentence, and especially since using name dropping.
| ferfumarma wrote:
| One of the biggest problems with such an assertion is that
| it's not falsifiable.
|
| It could be that we are borrowing qbit processing power from
| Russel's quantum teapot.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Science is not based on consensus seeking.
|
| Science is about coming up with the best explanations
| irrespective of whether or not a large chunk does not believe
| it.
|
| And best explanations are the ones that is hard to vary. Not
| the one that is most widely accepted or easy to accept based
| on the current world view.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Actually it is exactly based on hypotheses that are
| verified.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| And how do you verify hypothesis? What is the process to
| do that?
| fwip wrote:
| You use the hypotheses to make predictions and design
| experiments. Then you carry those out and see if they
| support the hypothesis.
|
| Or is this one of those rhetorical questions?
| brisky wrote:
| David is this you?
| justinpombrio wrote:
| From Wikipedia[1]:
|
| A poll of 72 "leading quantum cosmologists and other quantum
| field theorists" conducted before 1991 by L. David Raub
| showed 58% agreement with "Yes, I think MWI is true".[85]
|
| Max Tegmark reports the result of a "highly unscientific"
| poll taken at a 1997 quantum mechanics workshop. According to
| Tegmark, "The many worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second,
| comfortably ahead of the consistent histories and Bohm
| interpretations."[86]
|
| In response to Sean M. Carroll's statement "As crazy as it
| sounds, most working physicists buy into the many-worlds
| theory",[87] Michael Nielsen counters: "at a quantum
| computing conference at Cambridge in 1998, a many-worlder
| surveyed the audience of approximately 200 people... Many-
| worlds did just fine, garnering support on a level comparable
| to, but somewhat below, Copenhagen and decoherence." But
| Nielsen notes that it seemed most attendees found it to be a
| waste of time: Peres "got a huge and sustained round of
| applause...when he got up at the end of the polling and asked
| 'And who here believes the laws of physics are decided by a
| democratic vote?'"[88]
|
| A 2005 poll of fewer than 40 students and researchers taken
| after a course on the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics at
| the Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo
| found "Many Worlds (and decoherence)" to be the least
| favored.[89]
|
| A 2011 poll of 33 participants at an Austrian conference on
| quantum foundations found 6 endorsed MWI, 8 "Information-
| based/information-theoretical", and 14 Copenhagen;[90] the
| authors remark that MWI received a similar percentage of
| votes as in Tegmark's 1997 poll.[90]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-
| worlds_interpretation#Pol...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think if these polls were anonymous, copenhagen would
| lose share. there's a reason why MWI is disproportionately
| popular among people who basically have no professional
| worries because they are already uber-distinguished.
| korkybuchek wrote:
| > Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing
| capacity from other universes for these calculations?
|
| Tangentially related, but there's a great Asimov book about
| this called The Gods Themselves (fiction).
| vessenes wrote:
| I'm partial to Anathem by Stephenson on this topic as well
| korkybuchek wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation!
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| I was also really taken aback by this quote.
|
| I have no idea who put it there, but I can assure you the
| actual paper contains no such nonsense.
|
| I would have thought whoever writes the google tech blogs is
| more competent than bottom tier science journalists. But in
| this case I think it is more reasonable to assume malice, as
| the post is authored by the Google Quantum AI Lead, and makes
| more sense as hype-boosting buzzword bullshit than as an honest
| misunderstanding that was not caught during editing.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Quantum computation done in done multiple universes is the
| explanation given by David Deutsch the father of Quantum
| Computing. He invented the idea of a quantum computer to test
| the idea of parallel universes.
|
| If you are okay with a single universe coming to existence
| out of nothing you should be able to handle parallel
| universes as well just fine.
|
| Also your comment does not have any useful information. You
| assumed hype as the reason why they mentioned parallel
| computing. It's just a bias you have on looking at world.
| Hype does helps explain a lot of things. So it can be
| tempting to use it as a placeholder for anything that you
| don't accept based on your current set of beliefs.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| I disagree that it is "the best explanation we have". It's
| a nice theory, but like all theories in quantum foundations
| / interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is (at least
| currently) unfalsifiable.
|
| I didn't "assume" hype, I hypothesized it based on the
| evidence before me: There is nothing in Google's paper that
| deals with interpretations of quantum mechanics. This only
| appears in the blog post, with no evidence given. And there
| is nothing google is doing with it's quantum chip that
| would discriminate between interpretations of QM, so it is
| simply false that "It lends credence to ... parallel
| universes" over another interpretation.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| From what I understand, David Deutsch invented the idea
| of quantum computer as a way to test Parallel Universes.
| And later people went on and built the quantum computer.
| Are you saying that the implementation of a quantum
| computer does not require any kind of assumption on
| computations being run in parallel universes?
| Vecr wrote:
| It's just not how it works. All this type of quantum
| computer can do is test some of the more dubious
| objective collapse theories. Those are wrong anyway, so
| all theories that are still in the running agree.
| lanternfish wrote:
| In short, no.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| _If you are okay with a single universe coming to existence
| out of nothing you should be able to handle parallel
| universes as well just fine._
|
| We have evidence for this universe though.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to me because if we can borrow capacity
| to perform calculations then we can "borrow" an infinite amount
| of energy.
| griomnib wrote:
| Climate change solved: steal energy from adjacent universes,
| pipe our carbon waste into theirs.
| danielbln wrote:
| Remind me of The Expanse, where the ring space is syphoning
| energy from some other universe to keep the gates open.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| It's "out of the environment".
| griomnib wrote:
| We're taking negative externalities to a whole new
| dimension!
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| There's a fun short story in qntm's "Valuable Humans In
| Transit" about a scenario like this.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation
| occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that
| we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David
| Deutsch.
|
| That's in line with a religious belief. One camp believes one
| thing, other believes something else, others refuse to
| participate and say "shut up and calculate". Nothing wrong with
| religious beliefs of course, it's just important to know that
| is what it is.
| paxys wrote:
| I don't understand the jump from: classical algorithm takes
| time A -> quantum algorithm takes time B -> (A - B) must be
| borrowed from a parallel universe.
|
| Maybe A wasn't the most efficient algorithm for this universe
| to begin with?
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| I suspect the real issue is that Big Tech investors and
| executives (including Sundar Pichai) are utterly hopped up on
| sci-fi, and this sort of stuff convinces them to dedicate
| resources to quantum computing.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| That explains metaverse funding at least.
| ko27 wrote:
| It's a perfectly legit interpretation of what's happening, and
| many physicists share the same opinion. Of course the big
| caveat is that you need to interfere those worlds so that they
| cancel out, which necessarily requires a lower algorithmic
| bound which prevents you from doing infinite amount of
| computation in an instant.
| johnfn wrote:
| You don't even have to get to the point where you're reading a
| post off Scott Aaronson's blog[1] at all; his headline says "If
| you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't
| solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in
| parallel."
|
| [1]: https://scottaaronson.blog/
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| In the same way people believe P != NP, most quantum computing
| people believe BQP != NP, and NP-complete problems will still
| take exponential time on quantum computers. But if we had
| access to arbitrary parallel universes then presumably that
| shouldn't be an issue.
|
| The success on the random (quantum) circuit problem is really a
| valdiation of Feynman's idea, not Deutsch: classical computers
| need 2^n bits to simulate n qubits, so we will need quantum
| computers to efficiently simulate quantum phenomena.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Does access to arbitrary parallel universes imply that they
| divide up the computation and the correct answer is
| distributed to all of the universes or in such a collection,
| there will be sucker universes which will always receive
| wrong answers ?
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| Good question! The whole magic of quantum computation
| versus parallel computation is that the "universe"
| probabilities interfere with each other so that wrong
| answers cancel each other out. So I suppose the wrong
| "universes" still exist somewhere. But it's a whole lot
| less confusing if you view QC as taking place in one
| universe which is fundamentally probabilistic.
| melvinmelih wrote:
| > It performed a computation in under five minutes that would
| take one of today's fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10
| septillion years. If you want to write it out, it's
| 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
|
| If it's not, what would be your explanation for this
| significant improvement then?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I mean, that's like saying GPUs operate in parallel universes
| because they can do certain things thousands of times faster
| than CPUs.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Quantum computing can perform certain calculations much
| faster than classical computing in the same way classical
| computing can perform certain calculations much faster than
| an abacus
| GenerWork wrote:
| >Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing
| capacity from other universes for these calculations?
|
| Doesn't this also mean that other universes have civilizations
| that could potentially borrow capacity from our universe, and
| if so, what would that look like?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| The quantum computer idea was literally invented by David
| Deutsche to test the many universes theory of quantum physics.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| You've mentioned this in another comment. I have to point
| out, even if this is his opinion, and he has been influential
| in the field, it does not mean that this specific idea of his
| has been influential.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Sorry. I don't care whether an idea was influential or not.
| All I care is whether someone has a better explanation.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| I'll remind you of the quote that started this thread:
|
| "Do quantum computing folks really think that we are
| borrowing capacity from other universes for these
| calculations?"
|
| In this context, your opinion and Deutsch's opinion don't
| matter. The question is about whether the idea is common
| in the field or not.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Okay. I just don't understand. Are you saying Quantum
| Computers are also implemented without assuming the
| computations run in parallel universe?
| Vecr wrote:
| I don't know what he's saying, but I'm saying that the
| answer to your question is "Yes," unless quantum
| computers behave differently than expected.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Correct. The laws of quantum mechanics (used for building
| quantum computers among other things) make very little
| assumptions on the nature of the universe, and support
| multiple interpretations, many-worlds being only one of
| them.
|
| Quantum mechanics is a tool to calculate observable
| values, and this tool works very successfully without
| needing to make strong assumptions about the nature of
| the universe.
| killerstorm wrote:
| Everett interpretation simply asserts that quantum
| wavefunctions are real and there's no such thing as
| "wavefunction collapse". It's the simplest interpretation.
|
| People call it "many worlds" because we can interact only with
| a tiny fraction of the wavefunction at a time, i.e. other
| "branches" which are practically out of reach might be
| considered "parallel universes".
|
| But it would be more correct to say that it's just one universe
| which is much more complex than what it looks like to our eyes.
| Quantum computers are able to tap into this complexity. They
| make a more complete use of the universe we are in.
| layer8 wrote:
| The Schrodinger equation inherently contains a multiverse. The
| disagreement is about whether the wave function described by
| the equation collapses to a single universe upon measurement
| (i.e. whether the equation stops holding upon measurement), or
| whether the different branches continue to exist (i.e. the
| equation continues to hold at all times), each with a different
| measurement outcome. Regardless, between measurements the
| different branches exist in parallel. It's what allows quantum
| computation to be a thing.
| Lionga wrote:
| Non of that honkey ponkey is needed if you just give up
| locality and a hard deterministic explanation like De-
| Broglie-Bohm gives all the same correct measurements and
| conclusions like Copenhagen interpretation without
| multiverses and "wave function collapses".
|
| Copenhagen interpretation is just "easier" (like oops all our
| calculations about the univers don't seemt to fit, lets
| invent "dark matter") when the correct explanations makes any
| real world calculation practically impossible (thus ending
| most of physics further study) as any atom depends on every
| other atom at any time.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| > The Schrodinger equation inherently contains a multiverse.
|
| A simple counterexample is superdeterminism, in which the
| different measurement outcomes are an illusion and instead
| there is always a single pre-determined measurement outcome.
| Note that this does not violate Bell's inequality for hidden
| variable theories of quantum mechanics, as Bell's inequality
| only applies to hidden variables uncorrelated to the choice
| of measurement: in superdeterminism, both are predetermined
| so perfectly correlated.
| varjag wrote:
| Yes this is deeply unserious tangent in supposedly landmark
| technology announcement.
| athesyn wrote:
| It's just marketing.
| qnleigh wrote:
| This is a viable interpretation of quantum mechanics, but
| currently there is no way to scientifically falsify or confirm
| any particular interpretation. The boundary between philosophy
| and science is fuzzy at times, but this question is solidly on
| the side of philosophy.
|
| That being said, I think the two most commonly preferred
| interpretations of quantum mechanics among physicists are 'Many
| Worlds' and 'I try not to think about it too hard.'
| htrp wrote:
| 105 qubits
| wslh wrote:
| ELI5: what I could do if I have this chip at home?
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Probably just research on quantum computers? I don't think it's
| big enough to let you solve any practical problems, but maybe
| someone can correct me
| d3m0t3p wrote:
| IF (and that's a big if) that's true then it means they can
| factorize number into primes with this quantum computer and
| break encryption.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| No, this quantum computer cannot factorize the large
| composite numbers that we use for modern RSA. Even for the
| numbers that it _can_ factor, I don 't think it will be
| faster than a decent classical computer.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| No, that's not what that means.
|
| Not sure what you mean by the "that" when you say "if
| that's true", but there is nothing in this thread or by
| google that is anywhere close to breaking encryption.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| How are you so sure? If something that takes years is
| completed in minutes, how is encryption safe?
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| The amount of cubits required for a practical application
| of shors algorithm to break modern encryption is known
| and it's around 2500 qubits
|
| Willow has 100
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Because the "something" in question is not decryption.
| It's actually specifically something with no useful
| result, just a benchmark.
|
| Decryption with quantum computers is still likely decades
| away, as others have pointed out.
|
| To be specific, the best know quantum factoring did 15 =
| 3x5, and when 35 was not able to be factored when
| attempted. Most experimental demonstrations have stopped
| in recent years due to how pointless it currently is.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| > It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs
| in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in
| a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.
|
| Processing in multiverse. Would that mean we are inyecting
| entropy into those other verses? Could we calculate how many are
| there from the time it takes to do a given calculation? We need
| to cool the quantum chip in our universe, how are the (n-1)verses
| cooling on their end?
| deanCommie wrote:
| What if we are? And by injecting entropy into it, we are
| actually hurrying (in small insignificant ways) the heat death
| of those universes? What if we keep going and scale out and in
| the future it causes a meaningful impact to that universe in a
| way that it's residents would be extremely unhappy with, and
| would want to take revenge?
|
| What if it's already happening to our universe? And that is
| what black holes are? Or other cosmology concepts we don't
| understand?
|
| Maybe a great filter is your inability to protect your universe
| from quantum technology from elsewhere in the multiverse
| ripping yours up?
|
| Maybe the future of sentience isn't fighting for resources on a
| finite planet, or consuming the energy of stars, but fighting
| against other multiverses.
|
| Maybe The Dark Forest Defence is a decision to isolate your
| universe from the multiverse - destroying it's ability to
| participate in quantum computation, but also extending it's
| lifespan.
|
| (I don't believe ANY of this, but I'm just noting the
| fascinating science fiction storylines available)
| navaati wrote:
| Getting strong vibes of Asimov's novel "The Gods Themselves"
| here ! For those who haven't read it I recommend it. It's a
| nice little self-contained book, not a grandiose series and
| universe, but I love it.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I'd say it's more akin to Dark Energy than anything Black
| Hole related.
|
| DE is some sort of entropy that is being added to our cosmos
| in an exponential way over historic time. It began at a point
| a few billion in to our history.
| jsvlrtmred wrote:
| AFAIK a fundamental step in any quantum computing algorithm is
| bringing the qubits back to a state with a nonrandom outcome
| (specifically, the answer to the problem being solved). Thus a
| "good" quantum computer does not bifurcate the wavefunction at
| a macro level, ie there is no splitting of the "multiverse"
| after the calculation.
| thrance wrote:
| The many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory [1] is widely
| considered unfalsifiable and therefore mostly pseudoscientific.
| This article is way in over it's head in claiming such
| nonsense.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
| ipsum2 wrote:
| They renamed quantum supremacy to "beyond-classical"? That's
| something.
| maxboone wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.06768
|
| It's not something that new, I like it.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Quantum supremacy was an absolutely awful name for what it was
| (ability to do something, anything, better than a classical
| computer, which remains 'supreme' on all problems of any
| practical interest).
| airstrike wrote:
| Sure, but it sounded much cooler
| Mistletoe wrote:
| In what ways could Google monetize quantum computing?
| michaelt wrote:
| Searching through an unstructured data set of size N on a
| classical computer takes O(N) time
|
| but on a quantum computer, Grover's Algorithm allows such a
| search to be performed in O(N^0.5) time.
|
| So Quantum Computing, could bring us a future where, when you
| perform a Google search for a word, the web pages returned
| actually contain the word you searched for.
| _benj wrote:
| > So Quantum Computing, could bring us a future where, when
| you perform a Google search for a word, the web pages
| returned actually contain the word you searched for.
|
| Lol! I'm not gonna put a kagi plug here...
| 7e wrote:
| Quantum mechanics is a computational shortcut that makes our
| simulation cost-effective. Mass adoption of chips like these is
| going to make the particular situation we live in unprofitable
| for hosts, resulting in the firey and dramatic end of the world
| for us. Simulating ancestors is fun, but not after your cloud
| bill skyrockets. Thank you, Google, for bringing about the
| apocalypse.
| vessenes wrote:
| I'm a quantum dabbler so I'll throw out an armchair reaction:
| this is a significant announcement.
|
| My memory is that 256 bit keys in non quantum resistant algos
| need something like 2500 qubits or so; and by that I mean
| generally useful programmable qubits. To show a bit over 100
| qubits with stability, meaning the information survives a while,
| long enough to be read, and general enough to run some benchmarks
| on is something many people thought might never come.
|
| There's a sort of religious reaction people have to quantum
| computing: it breaks so many things that I think a lot of people
| just like to assume it won't happen: too much in computing and
| data security will change -> let's not worry about it.
|
| Combined with the slow pace of physical research progress
| (Schorrs algorithm for quantum factoring was mid 90s), and snake
| oil sales companies, it's easy to ignore.
|
| Anyway seems like the clock might be ticking; AI and data
| security will be unalterably different if so. Worth spending a
| little time doing some long tail strategizing I'd say.
| goatking wrote:
| How can I, a regular software engineer, learn about quantum
| computing without having to learn quantum theory?
|
| > Worth spending a little time doing some long tail
| strategizing I'd say
|
| any tips for starters?
| sshb wrote:
| Might be worth checking out: https://quantum.country/
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I recommend this book I studied it in Undergrad and I never
| took a quantum theory course. https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-
| Computing-Computer-Scientists...
| raidicy wrote:
| Are there any insights that you can give based off the info
| you've learned about quantum computation that you might not
| have been able to reach if you hadn't learned about it?
|
| From my __very__ shallow understanding, because all of the
| efficiency increases are in very specific areas, it might
| not be useful for the average computer science interested
| individual?
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Nearly all of quantum computation is theoretical
| algorithms and the hard engineering problems haven't been
| solved. Most of the math though has a large amount of
| overlap of AI / ML and all of deep learning to the point
| that Quantum computers could be used as "ML accelerators"
| by using algorithms (this is called Quantum Machine
| learning) [1]. Quantum computing could be learned with a
| limited understanding of Quantum theory unless you are
| trying to engineer the hardware.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_machine_learning
| kvathupo wrote:
| Possibly of interest, but I wrote a (hopefully
| approachable) report on quantum perceptrons a few years
| back [1]. Perhaps it's found elsewhere, but I was
| surprised by how, at least in this quantum algo's case,
| the basis of training was game theoretic not gradient
| descent!
|
| [1] - https://kvathupo.github.io/cs/quantum/457_Final_Rep
| ort.pdf
| potsandpans wrote:
| Start here: https://youtu.be/F_Riqjdh2oM
|
| You don't need to know quantum theory necessarily, but you
| will need to know some maths. Specifically linear algebra.
|
| There are a few youtube courses on linear algebra
|
| For a casual set of video: - https://youtube.com/playlist?lis
| t=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFit...
|
| For a more formal approach:
|
| - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49CF3715CB9EF31D
|
| And the corresponding open courseware
|
| - https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-
| spring-2010...
|
| Linear algebra done right comes highly recommended
|
| - https://linear.axler.net/
| RossBencina wrote:
| +1 for 18-06 and Axler. Another, more concrete, option (not
| sure how much it will help with quantum theory) is Stephen
| Boyd's "Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra" available
| online here:
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There is a course mentioned in the article, but I'm not clear
| on how "theory" it is.
|
| https://coursera.org/learn/quantum-error-correction
| carabiner wrote:
| First learn about eigenvalues.
| billti wrote:
| If you're a software engineer, then the Quantum Katas might
| fit your learning style. The exercises use Q#, which is
| quantum specific programming language.
|
| https://quantum.microsoft.com/en-us/tools/quantum-katas
|
| The first few lessons do cover complex numbers and linear
| algebra, so skip ahead if you want to get straight to the
| 'quantum' coding, but there's really no escaping the math if
| you really want to learn quantum.
|
| Disclaimer: I work in the Azure Quantum team on our Quantum
| Development Kit (https://github.com/microsoft/qsharp) -
| including Q#, the Katas, and our VS Code extension. Happy to
| answer any other questions on it.
| auto wrote:
| Is there a reasonable pivot for someone well versed in the
| software engineering space to get in, or is it still the
| playground of relevant Ph.Ds and the like? I've been up and
| down the stack from firmware to the cloud, going on 14
| years in the industry, have a Master's in CS, am the
| technical lead for a team, yada yada, but have been
| flirting with the idea of getting out of standard product
| development and back into the nitty gritty of the space I
| first pursued during undergrad.
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| > Is there a reasonable pivot for someone well versed in
| the software engineering space to get in, or is it still
| the playground of relevant Ph.Ds and the like?
|
| there's no such thing as a practical QC and there won't
| be for decades. this isn't a couple of years away - this
| is "maybe, possibly, pretty please, if we get lucky"
| 25-50 years away. find the above comment that alludes to
| "2019 estimates needing ~20 million physical qubits" and
| consider that this thing has 105 physical qubits. then
| skim the posted article and find this number
|
| > the key quantum computational resource -- are now
| approaching 100 us (microseconds)
|
| that's how long those 105 physical qubits stay coherent
| for. now ponder your career pivot.
|
| source: i dabbled during my PhD - took a couple of
| classes from Fred Chong, wrote a paper - it's all hype.
| kvathupo wrote:
| The bar for entry is surprisingly low, you just need to brush
| up on intro abstract algebra. I recommend the following:
|
| 1. Kaye, LaFlamme, and Mosca - An Introduction to Quantum
| Computing
|
| 2. Nielsen and Chuang - Quantum Computation and Quantum
| Information (The Standard reference source)
|
| 3. Andrew Childs's notes here [1]. Closest to the state-of-
| the-art, at least circa ~3 years ago.
|
| [1] - https://www.cs.umd.edu/~amchilds/qa/
| neoden wrote:
| These lessons might be of help:
| https://youtu.be/3-c4xJa7Flk?si=krrpXMKh3X5ktrzT
| currymj wrote:
| specifically avoid resources written by and for physicists.
|
| the model of quantum mechanics, if you can afford to ignore
| any real-world physical system and just deal with abstract
| |0>, |1> qubits, is relatively easy. (this is really funny
| given how incredibly difficult actual quantum physics can
| be.)
|
| you have to learn basic linear algebra with complex numbers
| (can safely ignore anything really gnarly).
|
| then you learn how to express Boolean circuits in terms of
| different matrix multiplications, to capture classical
| computation in this model. This should be pretty easy if you
| have a software engineer's grasp of Boolean logic.
|
| Then you can learn basic ideas about entanglement, and a few
| of the weird quantum tricks that make algorithms like Shor
| and Grover search work. Shor's algorithm may be a little
| mathematically tough.
|
| realistically you probably will never need to know how to
| program a quantum computer even if they become practical and
| successful. applications are powerful but very limited.
|
| "What You Shouldn't Know About Quantum Computers" is a good
| non-mathematical read.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15838
| ajb wrote:
| The simplest algorithm to understand is probably Grover's
| algorithm. Knowing that shows you how to get an sqrt(N)
| speedup on many classical algorithms. Then have a look at
| shor's algorithm which is the classic factoring algorithm.
|
| I would not worry about hardware at first. But if you are
| interested and like physics, the simplest to understand are
| linear optical quantum circuits. These use components which
| may be familiar from high school or undergraduate physics.
| The catch is that the space (and component count) is
| exponential in the number of qubits, hence the need for more
| exotic designs.
| thrance wrote:
| The error rates given are still horrendous and nowhere near low
| enough for the Quantum Fourier Transform used by Shor's
| algorithm. Taking qubit connectivity into account, a single CX
| between 2 qubits that are 10 edges aways gives an error rate of
| 1.5%.
|
| Also, the more qubits you have/the more instructions are in
| your program, the faster the quantum state collapses.
| Exponentially so. Qubit connectivity is still ridiculously low
| (~3) and does not seem to be improving at all.
|
| About AI, what algorithm(s) do you think might have an edge
| over classical supercomputers in the next 30 years? I'm really
| curious, because to me it's all (quantum) snake oil.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| Re: AI, it's a long way off still. The big limitation to
| anything quantum is always going to be decoherence and t-time
| [0]. To do anything with ML, you'll need whole circuit (more
| complex than shor's) just to initialize the data on the
| quantum device; the algorithms to do this are complex
| (exponential) [1]. So, you have to run a very expensive data-
| initialization circuit, and only then can you start to run
| your ML circuit. All of this needs to be done within the
| machine's t-time limit. If you exceed that limit, then the
| measured state of a qubit will have more to do with outside-
| world interactions than interactions with your quantum gates.
|
| Google's willow chip has t-times of about 60-100mu.s. That's
| not an impressive figure -- in 2022, IBM announced their
| Eagle chip with t-times of around 400mu.s [2]. Google's angle
| here would be the error correction (EC).
|
| The following portion from Google's announcement seems most
| important:
|
| > With 105 qubits, Willow now has best-in-class performance
| across the two system benchmarks discussed above: quantum
| error correction and random circuit sampling. Such
| algorithmic benchmarks are the best way to measure overall
| chip performance. Other more specific performance metrics are
| also important; for example, our T1 times, which measure how
| long qubits can retain an excitation -- the key quantum
| computational resource -- are now approaching 100 us
| (microseconds). This is an impressive ~5x improvement over
| our previous generation of chips.
|
| Again, as they lead with, their focus here is on error
| correction. I'm not sure how their results compare to
| competitors, but it sounds like they consider that to be the
| biggest win of the project. The RCS metric is interesting,
| but RCS has no (known) practical applications (though it is a
| common benchmark). Their T-times are an improvement over
| older Google chips, but not industry-leading.
|
| I'm curious if EC can mitigate the sub-par decoherence times.
|
| [0]: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.270.5242
| .163...
|
| [1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3511065.3511068
|
| [2]: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/eagle-quantum-
| processor-per...
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| > I'm curious if EC can mitigate the sub-par decoherence
| times.
|
| The main EC paper referenced in this blog post showed that
| the logical qubit lifetime using a distance-7 code (all 105
| qubits) was double the lifetime of the physical qubits of
| the same machine.
|
| I'm not sure how lifetime relates to decoherence time, but
| if that helps please let me know.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| That's very useful, I missed that when I read through the
| article.
|
| If the logical qubit can have double the lifetime of any
| physical qubit, that's massive. Recall IBM's chips, with
| t-times of ~400microseconds. Doubling that would change
| the order of magnitude.
|
| It still won't be enough to do much in the near term -
| like other commenters say, this seems to be a proof of
| concept - but the concept is very promising.
|
| The first company to get there and make their systems
| easy to use could see a similar run up in value to NVIDIA
| after ChatGPT3. IBM seems to be the strongest in the
| space overall, for now.
| deepburner wrote:
| I'm sorry if this is nitpicky but your comment is
| hilarious to me - doubling something is doubling
| something, "changing the order of magnitude" would entail
| multiplication by 10.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| Hahaha not at all, great catch. Sometimes my gray matter
| just totally craps out... like thinking of "changing
| order of magnitude" as "adding 1 extra digit".
|
| Reminds me of the time my research director pulled me
| aside for defining CPU as "core processing unit" instead
| of "central processing unit" in a paper!
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| Wouldn't thoose increased decoherence times need to be
| viewed in relation to the time it takes to execute a basic
| gate? If the time to execute a gate also increases it may
| overtake practicality of having less noisy logical qubits.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| The required number of qubits to execute Shor's algorithm is
| way larger than 2500 qubits as the error ceiling for logical
| qubits must decrease exponentially with every logical qubit
| added to produce meaningful results. Hence, repeated
| applications of error correction or an increase in the surface
| code would be required. That would significantly blow up the
| number of physical qubits needed.
| adastra22 wrote:
| He's quoting the number of logical qubits (which is 1024
| IIRC, not 2500), after error correction.
|
| ETA: Wikipedia 2330 qubits, but I'm not sure it is citing the
| most recent work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-
| curve_cryptography#ci...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| 1024 is for RSA-1024, which is believed to be broken by
| classical means at this point. Everyone doing anything with
| RSA is on 4k or larger.
| Vecr wrote:
| They are? The short term recommendation is 3072, and I
| still see lots of 2048. Actually, it's mostly 2048.
| wcoenen wrote:
| > _Everyone doing anything with RSA is on 4k or larger._
|
| The Let's Encrypt intermediate certificates R10 and R11
| seem to be only 2048 bit.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A signature (not encryption) with short-term valid life
| is fine at 2048 still.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I took this conversation to be about ECC, not RSA.
| notarealllama wrote:
| My completely unfounded tin foil hat at the moment is
| that ECC was pushed as a standard not because it was
| faster/ smaller, but the smaller bit size makes it less
| quantum resistant and is more prone to be broken first
| (if not already) via quantum supremacy.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Discrete log doesn't use Shor's algorithm, and appears to
| need more qubits to break (per key bit).
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| I actually thought the number of logical qubits needed was
| around 20 for factorisation as the state space size is
| 2^(2^n) and hence did not recognise them as the number of
| logical qubits required. It is often misunderstood that
| error correction needs to be done only once, as with
| classical quantum computers, and the numbers would fit
| together with one pass of error correction.
|
| The Shor's algorithm requires binary encoding; hence, 2048
| logical qubits are needed to become a nuance for
| cryptography. This, in turn, means that one will always be
| easily able to run away from a quantum adversary by paying
| a polynomial price on group element computations, whereas a
| classical adversary is exponentially bounded in computation
| time, and a quantum adversary is exponentially bounded with
| a number of physical qubits. Fascinating...
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Isn't that what they are claiming is true now? That the
| errors do decrease exponentially with each qubit added?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Data security okay. But AI? How will that change?
| adastra22 wrote:
| AI is essentially search. Quantum computers are really good
| at search.
| sheeshkebab wrote:
| Search of what?
| roywiggins wrote:
| Latent space?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_space
| adastra22 wrote:
| Anything. Everything. In domains where the search space
| is small enough to physically enumerate and store or
| evaluate every option, search is commonly understood as a
| process solved by simple algorithms. In domains where the
| search space is too large to physically realize or index,
| search becomes "intelligence."
|
| E.g. winning at Chess or Go (traditional AI domains) is
| searching through the space of possible game states to
| find a most-likely-to-win path.
|
| E.g. an LLM chat application is searching through
| possible responses to find one which best correlates with
| expected answer to the prompt.
|
| With Grover's algorithm, quantum computers let you find
| an answer in any disordered search space with O(sqrt(N))
| operations instead of O(N). That's potentially applicable
| to many AI domains.
|
| But if you're so narrow minded as to only consider
| connectionist / neural network algorithms as "AI", then
| you may be interested to know that quantum linear algebra
| is a thing too:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HHL_algorithm
| cwillu wrote:
| O(sqrt(N)) is easily dominated by the relative ease of
| constructing much bigger classical computers though.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Uh, no? Not for large N.
|
| There are about 2^152 possible legal chess states. You
| cannot build a classical computer large enough to compute
| that many states. Cryptography is generally considered
| secure when it involves a search space of only 2^100
| states.
|
| But you could build a computer to search though
| sqrt(2^152) = 2^76 states. I mean it'd be big--that's on
| the order of total global storage capacity. But not
| "bigger than the universe" big.
| IanCal wrote:
| Doing 2^76 iterations is _huge_. That 's a trillion
| operations a second for two and a half thousand years if
| I've not slipped up and missed a power of ten.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| training an ai model is essentially searching for
| parameters that can make a function really accurate at
| making predictions. in the case of LLMs, they predict
| text.
| cwillu wrote:
| Unstructured search is only a [?]n improvement. You need to
| find some way for algorithmically significant
| interference/cancellation of terms in order for a qc to
| potentially (!) have any benefit.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Aren't quantum computers expected to be like digitally read
| analog computers for high dimension optimization problems,
| and AI is like massive high dimension optimization problems?
| Yoric wrote:
| Google is betting on digital quantum computers.
|
| There are, however, analog quantum computers, e.g. by
| Pasqal, which hope to capitalize on this to optimize AI-
| like high dimension optimization problems.
| gecko22 wrote:
| Why do quantum computers need to be analog to be applied
| to such problems?
| winwang wrote:
| Edit after skimming arxiv preprint[1]:
|
| Yeah, this is pretty huge. They achieved the result with
| surface codes, which are general ECCs. The repetition code was
| used to further probe quantum ECC floor. "Just POC" likely
| doesn't do it justice.
|
| (Original comment):
|
| Also quantum dabbler (coincidentally dabbled in bitflip quantum
| error correction research). Skimmed the post/research blog. I
| believe the key point is the scaling of error correction via
| repetition codes, would love someone else's viewpoint.
|
| Slightly concerning quote[2]:
|
| """
|
| By running experiments with repetition codes and ignoring other
| error types, we achieve lower encoded error rates while
| employing many of the same error correction principles as the
| surface code. The repetition code acts as an advance scout for
| checking whether error correction will work all the way down to
| the near-perfect encoded error rates we'll ultimately need.
|
| """
|
| I'm getting the feeling that this is more about proof-of-
| concept, rather than near-practicality, but this is certainly
| one fantastic POC if true.
|
| [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13687
|
| [2]: https://research.google/blog/making-quantum-error-
| correction...
|
| Relevant quote from preprint (end of section 1, sorry for copy-
| paste artifacts):
|
| """
|
| In this work, we realize surface codes operating below
| threshold on two superconducting processors. Using a 72-qubit
| processor, we implement a distance-5 surface code operating
| with an integrated real-time decoder. In addition, using a
| 105-qubit processor with similar performance, we realize a
| distance-7 surface code. These processors demonstrate L > 2 up
| to distance-5 and distance7, respectively. Our distance-5
| quantum memories are beyond break-even, with distance-7
| preserving quantum information for more than twice as long as
| its best constituent physical qubit. To identify possible
| logical error f loors, we also implement high-distance
| repetition codes on the 72-qubit processor, with error rates
| that are dominated by correlated error events occurring once an
| hour. These errors, whose origins are not yet understood, set a
| current error floor of 10-10. Finally, we show that we can
| maintain below-threshold operation on the 72qubit processor
| even when decoding in real time, meeting the strict timing
| requirements imposed by the processor's fast 1.1us cycle
| duration.
|
| """
| echelon wrote:
| Google could put themselves and everyone else out of business
| if the algorithms that underpin our ability to do e-commerce
| and financial transactions can be defeated.
|
| Goodbye not just to Bitcoin, but also Visa, Stripe, Amazon
| shopping, ...
| mperham wrote:
| Right? Does TLS1.3 have the underpinnings to use quantum-
| proof encryption algos?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/post-
| quantu...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2024/10/0
| 9...
| bangaladore wrote:
| It seems you can get TLS 1.3 (or atlest slighty modified
| 1.3) to be quantum secure, but it increases the handshake
| size by roughly 9x. Cloudflare unfortunately didn't
| mention much about the other downsides though.
|
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/kemtls-post-quantum-tls-
| without-...
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Yes-ish. They're not enabled yet, but post-quantum
| signatures & KEMs are available in some experimental
| versions of TLS. None are yet standardized, but I'd
| expect a final version well before QCs can actually break
| practical signatures or key exchanges.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| Why is no one else talking about this? I came here to see a
| discussion about this and encryption.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Because this result is still very far from anything
| related to practical decryption.
| shriphani wrote:
| bitcoin proof of work is not as impacted by quantum
| computers - grover's algorithm provides a quadratic speedup
| for unstructured search - so SHA256 ends up with 128 bits
| of security for pre-image resistance. BTC can easily move
| to SHA512.
|
| symmetric ciphers would have similar properties (AES,
| CHACHA20). Asymmetric encryption atm would use ECDH (which
| breaks) to generate a key for use with symmetric ciphers -
| Kyber provides a PQC KEM for this.
|
| So, the situation isn't as bad. We're well positioned in
| cryptography to handle a PQC world.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| You got the main idea, it's a proof-of-concept: that a class
| of error-correcting code on real physical quantum chips obey
| the threshold theorem, as is expected based on theory and
| simulations.
|
| However the main scaling of error correction is via surface
| codes, not repetition codes. It's an important point as
| surface codes correct all Pauli errors, not just either bit-
| flips or phase-flips.
|
| They use repetition codes as a diagnostic method in this
| paper more than anything, it is not the main result.
|
| In particular, I interpret the quote you used as: "We want to
| scale surface codes even more, and if we were able to do the
| same scaling with surface codes as we are able to do with
| repetition codes, then this is the behaviour we would
| expect."
|
| Edit: Welp, saw your edit, you came to the same conclusion
| yourself in the time it took me to write my comment.
| winwang wrote:
| Haha, classic race condition, but I appreciate your take
| nonetheless!
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think some element of it might be: Shor's algorithm has been
| known of for 30 years, and hypothetically could be used to
| decrypt captured communications, right? So, retroactively I
| will have been dumb for not having switched to a quantum-
| resistant scheme. And, dumb in a way that a bunch of academic
| nerds have been pointing out for decades.
|
| That level of embarrassment is frankly difficult to face. And
| it would be devastating to the self-image of a bunch of
| "practical" security gurus.
|
| Therefore any progress must be an illusion. In the real world,
| the threats are predictable and mistakes don't slowly snowball
| into a crisis. See also, infrastructure.
| adastra22 wrote:
| What would you switch to? There hasn't been post quantum
| systems to use until very very recently.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| > AI and data security will be unalterably different if so
|
| Definitely agree with the latter, but do you have any sources
| on how quantum comphters make "AI" (i.e. matrix multiplication)
| faster?
| meta_x_ai wrote:
| Exploring via Search can become O(1) instead of M^N
| npalli wrote:
| > Worth spending a little time doing some long tail
| strategizing I'd say.
|
| Yup, like Bitcoin going to zero.
| drcode wrote:
| eh, they will add a quantum-resistant signature scheme
| (already a well-understood thing) then people can transfer
| their funds to the new addresses before it is viable to crack
| the existing addresses
| K0balt wrote:
| I think you're going to need about 10,000,000 qbits to divert
| a transaction, but that's still within foreseeable scale. I
| think it's extreme likely that the foundation will have
| finished their quantum resistance planning before we get to
| 10MM coherent qbits, but still, it's a potential scenario.
|
| More likely that other critical infrastructure failures will
| happen within trad-finance, much larger vulnerability
| footprint, and being able to trivially reverse engineer every
| logged SSL session is likely to be a much more impactful turn
| of events. I'd venture that there are significant ear-on-the-
| wire efforts going on right now in anticipation of a
| reasonable bulk SSL de cloaking solution. Right now we think
| it doesn't matter who can see our "secure" traffic. I think
| that is going to change, retroactively, in a big way.
| vessenes wrote:
| I agree that the scary scenario is stored SSL frames from
| 20 years of banking. That's nuclear meltdown scenarios.
| K0balt wrote:
| It is.. and I don't see a way to avoid it.
| sekai wrote:
| > Yup, like Bitcoin going to zero.
|
| If the encryption on Bitcoin is broken, say goodbye to the
| banking system.
| nadahalli wrote:
| [pedantic hat on] Bitcoin doesn't use encryption.
|
| You mean digital signatures - and yes, we use signatures
| everywhere in public key cryptography.
| vessenes wrote:
| I'm a _little_ more in my wheelhouse here -- without an algo
| change, Grover 's algorithm would privilege quantum miners
| significantly, but not any more than the industry has seen in
| the last 13 years (C code on CPU -> GPU -> Large Geometry
| ASIC -> Small Geometry ASIC are similarly large shifts in
| economics for miners probably).
|
| As to faking signatures and, e.g. stealing Satoshi's coins or
| just fucking up the network with fake transactions that
| verify, there is some concern and there are some attack
| vectors that work well if you have a large, fast quantum
| computer and want to ninja in. Essentially you need something
| that can crack a 256 bit ECDSA key before a block that
| includes a recently released public key can be inverted.
| That's definitely out of the reach of anyone right now, much
| less persistent threat actors, much less hacker hobbyists.
|
| But it won't always be. The current state of the art plan
| would be to transition to a quantum-resistant UTXO format,
| and I would imagine, knowing how Bitcoin has managed itself
| so far, that will be a well-considered, very safe, multi-year
| process, and it will happen with plenty of time.
| qnleigh wrote:
| You need to distinguish between "physical qubits" and "logical
| qubits." This paper creates a single "first-of-a-kind" logical
| qubit with about 100 physical qubits (using Surface Code
| quantum error correction). A paper from Google in 2019
| estimates needing ~20 million physical qubits ("How to factor
| 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20 million noisy qubits"
| - https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749), though recent advances
| probably brought this number down a bit. That's because to run
| Shor's algorithm at a useful scale, you need a few thousand
| very high quality logical qubits.
|
| So despite this significant progress, it's probably a still a
| while until RSA is put out of the job. That being said, quantum
| computers would be able to retroactively break any public keys
| that were stored, so there's a case to be made for switching to
| quantum-resistant cryptography (like lattice-based
| cryptography) sooner rather than later.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| This is correct. I worked in quantum research a little.
| r33b33 wrote:
| > Worth spending a little time doing some long tail
| strategizing I'd say.
|
| What do you mean by this?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The _only_ thing I know or understand about quantum computing
| is its ability to "crack" traditional encryption algorithms.
|
| So the commenter is saying that Cybersecurity needs to be
| planning for a near-world where traditional cryptography,
| including lots of existing data at rest, is suddenly as
| insecure as plaintext.
| sizzle wrote:
| How long until this can derive a private key from its public
| key in the cryptocurrency space? Is this an existential threat
| to crypto?
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| I really wish the release videos made things a ~tad~ bit less
| technical. I know quantum computers are still very early so the
| target audience is technical for this kind of release, but I
| can't help wonder how many more people would be excited and
| pulled in if they made the main release video more approachable.
| rdtsc wrote:
| The main part for me is reducing error faster as they scale. This
| was a major road-block, known as "below threshold". That's a
| major achievement.
|
| I am not sure about RCS as the benchmark as not sure how useful
| that is in practice. It just produced really nice numbers. If I
| had a few billions of pocket change around, would I buy this to
| run RCS really fast? -Nah, probably not. I'll get more excited
| when they factor numbers at a rate that would break public key
| crypto. For that would spend my pocket change!
| vessenes wrote:
| The implication seems to be that they can implement other
| gates. As my gen z kids say: huge if true.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| It's really important to note that the error correction test
| and the random circuit test are separate tests.
|
| The error correction is producing a single logical qubit of
| quantum memory, i.e. a single qubit with no gates applied to
| it.
|
| Meanwhile, the random circuit sampling uses physical qubits
| with no error correction, and is used as a good benchmark in
| part because it can prove "quantumness" even in the presence
| of noise.[1]
|
| [1] https://research.google/blog/validating-random-circuit-
| sampl...
| fidotron wrote:
| The slightly mind blowing bit is detailed here: >
| https://research.google/blog/making-quantum-error-correction...
|
| "the first quantum processor where error-corrected qubits get
| exponentially better as they get bigger"
|
| Achieving this turns the normal problem of scaling quantum
| computation upside down.
| thrance wrote:
| It also breaks a fundamental law of quantum theory, that the
| bigger a system in a quantum state is, the faster it collapses,
| exponentially so. Which should at least tell you to take
| Google's announcement with z grain of salt.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| This is not a "fundamental law of quantum theory", as
| evidenced by the field of quantum error correcting codes.
|
| Google's announcement is legit, and is in line with what
| theory and simulations expect.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| We need to seriously think if our systems/society are even
| remotely ready for this.
| germandiago wrote:
| In order to evolve, forbiding evolution is the wrong path. Just
| use and study and learn from new things and accumulate
| experience is the way to go.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Biological evolution occurs on the backs of millions of
| deaths.
| hello_computer wrote:
| and a few extinctions!
| _benj wrote:
| This comment reminded me of the TV show I've been recently
| watching on Netflix, Pantheon. It's about a different technical
| breakthrough (I don't want to put any spoilers), but it's also
| something that completely alters society, no security is able
| to deal with that new technology, first thing that happens is
| that the technology is weaponized... etc.
|
| Idk enough about quantum computing to even understand this...
| but a technology that turns, say, AES or Blowfish, suddenly
| trivial to crack would very likely change the world
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| This is how I feel about drones.
| riiii wrote:
| They'll be banned for public use in the next 2-3 years. I'm
| not advocating for the ban, just saying it'll happen.
| debacle wrote:
| It's easier to make a "ghost drone" than a "ghost gun."
| Banning will not be feasible for bad actors.
| seanw444 wrote:
| They're not. What's there to think about?
| preisschild wrote:
| As if "thinking about it" will ever stop people from acting
| first.
|
| I'm far more scared when tech-bros like Musk land on Mars and
| contaminate stuff we might not even be able to detect yet.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i'm not even remotely 'far more scared' about that. i think
| you are insufficiently scared about crypto being broken
| taf2 wrote:
| Is this using ionq or is this in-house from google?
| vessenes wrote:
| They say in-house with their own US fab in the announcement.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >the more qubits we use in Willow, the more we reduce errors, and
| the more quantum the system becomes
|
| That's an EXTRAORDINARY claim and one that contradicts the
| experience of pretty much all other research and development in
| quantum error correction over the course of the history of
| quantum computing.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| It's really not so extraordinary, exponential reduction in
| logical errors when the physical error rate is below a
| threshold (for certain types of error correcting codes_ is well
| accepted an both theoretical and computational grounds.
|
| For a rough but well-sourced overview, see Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_theorem
|
| For a review paper on surface codes, see A. G. Fowler, M.
| Mariantoni, J. M. Martinis, and A. N. Cleland, "Surface codes:
| Towards practical large-scale quantum computation," Phys. Rev.
| A, vol. 86, no. 3, p. 032324, Sep. 2012, doi:
| 10.1103/PhysRevA.86.032324.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Does this not assume uncorrelated errors?
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| It does. It's up to engineering to make errors
| uncorrelated. The google paper being referenced actually
| makes an "error budget" to see what the main sources of
| errors are, and also run tests to find sources of
| correlated errors.
|
| The claim about this is that correlated errors will lead to
| an "error floor", a certain size of error correction past
| which exponential reduction in errors no longer applies,
| due to a certain frequency of correlated errors. See figure
| 3a of the arxiv version of the paper:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13687
| qnleigh wrote:
| I wouldn't call it extraordinary, as this has been expected
| since the first quantum error correcting codes were worked out
| theoretically. But it is a strong claim, backed up with
| comparably strong evidence. Figure 1d of the paper shows
| exactly this https://arxiv.org/html/2408.13687v1, and unlike
| many other comparable works, there are no hat tricks like post-
| selection to boost the numbers.
| deepburner wrote:
| it... doesn't? threshold theorems are well known.
| da-bacon wrote:
| >That's an EXTRAORDINARY claim and one that contradicts the
| experience of pretty much all other research and development in
| quantum error correction over the course of the history of
| quantum computing.
|
| Not sure why you would say that? This sort of exponential
| suppression of errors is exactly how quantum error correction
| works and why we think quantum computing is viable. Source:
| have worked on quantum error correction for a couple of
| decades. Disclosure: I work on the team that did this
| experiment. More reading: lecture notes from back in the day
| explaining this exponential suppression
| https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse599d/06wi/lectu...
| deanCommie wrote:
| I don't want to judge people by their cover, but I want to
| confess to having those feelings right now.
|
| In this day and age, I feel an immediate sense of distrust to any
| technologist with the "Burning Man" aesthetic for lack of a
| better word. (which you can see in the author's wikipedia profile
| from an adjacent festival ->
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmut_Neven, as well as in this
| blog itself with his wristbands and sunglasses ->
| https://youtu.be/l_KrC1mzd0g?si=HQdB3NSsLBPTSv-B&t=39)
|
| In the 2000's, any embracement of alternative culture was a
| breath of fresh air for technologists - it showed they cared
| about the human element of society as much as the mathematics.
|
| But nowadays, especially in a post-truthiness, post-COVID world,
| it comes off in a different way to me. Our world is now filled
| with quasi-scientific cults. From flat earthers to anti-vaxxers,
| to people focused on "healing crystals", to the resurgence of
| astrology.
|
| I wouldn't be saying this about anyone in a more shall we say
| "classical" domain. As a technologist, your claims are pretty
| easily verifiable and testable, even on fuzzy areas like large
| language models.
|
| But in the Quantum world? I immediately start to approach the
| author of this with distrust:
|
| * He's writing about multiverses
|
| * He's claiming a quantum performance for something that would
| take a classical computer septillions of years.
|
| I'm a layman in this domain. If these were true, should they be
| front page news on CNN and the BBC? Or is this just how
| technology breakthroughs start (after all the Transformer paper
| wasn't)
|
| But no matter what I just can't help but feel like the author's
| choices harm the credibility of the work. Before you downvote me,
| consider replying instead. I'm not defending feeling this way.
| I'm just explaining what I feel and why.
| bubblyworld wrote:
| I don't share your mistrust of the aesthetic, but I think it's
| pretty natural to be skeptical of the out-group, so to speak,
| doubly so if you have no practical way of verifying their
| claims. At least you're honest about it!
|
| I guess something to think about it that amongst a group like
| the "burners" there is huge variety in individual experience
| and skill. And even within a single human mind it's possible to
| have radically groundbreaking thoughts in one domain, and
| simultaneously be a total crack-pot in another. Linus Pauling
| and the vitamin C thing comes to mind. There's no such thing as
| an average person!
|
| I guess we'll see what the quantum experts have to say about
| this in the weeks to come =)
| leptons wrote:
| I know Hartmut Neven personally and professionally, and have
| for decades. He's not anything like you claim he is. Attacking
| him for wearing a wristband? That's an ad hominem attack, and
| not worthy of my time to counter you on.
|
| The fact is that "Burners" are everywhere, nothing about
| Burning Man means someone is automatically a quack. Your
| distrust seems misplaced and colored by your own personal
| biases. The list of prominent people in tech that are also
| "burners" would likely shock you. I doubt you've ever been to
| Burning Man, but you're going to judge people who have? Maybe
| you're just feeling a little bit too "square" and are
| threatened by people who live differently than you do.
|
| Yes, Hartmut has a style, yes, he enjoys his lifestyle, no,
| he's not a quack. You don't have to believe me, and I don't
| expect that you will, but I've talked at length with him about
| his work, and about a great many other topics, and he is not as
| you think he is.
|
| Your comment here says far more about you than it says about
| Hartmut Neven.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Attacking him for wearing a wristband? That's an ad hominem
| attack, and not worthy of my time to counter you on.
|
| I picked my words very carefully and I would appreciate if
| you responded to what I said, not what you think I implied.
|
| I specifically called out - I'm having feelings of bias. That
| in a field full of quack science and overpromises and
| underdelivery, I am extraordinarily suspicious of anyone who
| I feel might be associated with a shall we say "less than
| rigorous relationship with scientific accuracy". This
| person's aesthetic reminds me of this.
|
| > The fact is that "Burners" are everywhere, nothing about
| Burning Man means someone is automatically a quack. Your
| distrust seems misplaced and colored by your own personal
| biases. The list of prominent people in tech that are also
| "burners" would likely shock you. I doubt you've ever been to
| Burning Man, but you're going to judge people who have? Maybe
| you're just feeling a little bit too "square" and are
| threatened by people who live differently than you do.
|
| You couldn't be more wrong. I'm a repeat Burner throughout
| the 2000's (though it's been a decade), and I've been to a
| dozen regional Burner events. I know many Burners both in the
| tech industry and outside of it.
|
| So I actually speak with some experience. I know wonderful
| people who are purely artists and are not
| scientifically/technologically inclined - and they're great.
| I also know deep technologists for whom Burning man is purely
| an aesthetic preference - a costume not an outfit. Something
| to pretend to be for a little while but that otherwise has no
| bearing on their outside life.
|
| And I unfortunately know those whose brainrot ends up
| intertwining. Crypto evangelists who find healing crystals
| just as groundbreaking as the blockchain. It's this latter
| category that I am the most suspicious of, and what I worry
| when I see a person presented as an authoritative leader in
| the Quantum Computing domain demonstrate in their external
| presentation.
|
| I led with an acknowledgement that I am judging a book by
| it's cover, which one ought to never do. But I think it is
| worth pointing out because respectability in a cutting edge
| field is important, lest you end up achieving technological
| breakthroughs that don't actually change society at all (as
| already happened with Google Glass).
|
| > You don't have to believe me, and I don't expect that you
| will,
|
| Why would you expect that I wouldn't?
|
| > but I've talked at length with him about his work, and
| about a great many other topics, and he is not as you think
| he is.
|
| That's fantastic to hear! You have direct evidence
| contradicting the assumptions generated by my first
| impression. This is all that matters, and all you had to say.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| > I immediately start to approach the author of this with
| distrust:
|
| > * He's writing about multiverses
|
| > * He's claiming a quantum performance for something that
| would take a classical computer septillions of years.
|
| > I'm a layman in this domain
|
| I think your skepticism is well-founded. But as you learn more
| about the field, you learn what parts are marketing/hype
| bullshit, and what parts are not, and how to translate from the
| bullshit to the underlying facts.
|
| IMO:
|
| > He's writing about multiverses
|
| The author's pet theory, no relevance to the actual science
| being done.
|
| * He's claiming a quantum performance for something that would
| take a classical computer septillions of years.
|
| The classical computer is running a very naive algorithm,
| basically brute-force. It is very easy to write a classical
| algorithm which is very slow. But still, in the field, it takes
| new state-of-the-art classical algorithms run on medium size
| clusters to get results that are on-par with recent quantum
| computers. Not even much better, just on-par.
|
| > Or is this just how technology breakthroughs start (after all
| the Transformer paper wasn't)
|
| You could say that. It's not truly a breakthrough, but it is
| one more medium-size step in a rapidly advancing field.
| hello_computer wrote:
| The hall of great scientists is packed with holders of strange
| beliefs. Half of Newton's writings were on religious
| speculation, alchemy, and the occult. One of Einstein's very
| favorite books was Blavatsky's " _Isis Unveiled_ ". Just about
| every key person in early QM was deep into the Vedas. Kary
| Mullis was an AIDS denialist, and questioned the utility of his
| own test as a virus detector. If you really think about it, you
| will see that this phenomenon arises more from necessity than
| coincidence.
| Aeium wrote:
| The quantum performance thing is real, but that the random
| circuit sampling problem they are tabling as the benchmark here
| is for a quantum circuit.
|
| So really what is being claimed is that classical computers
| can't easily simulate quantum ones. But is that really
| surprising?
|
| What would be surprising would be that kind of speedup vs
| classical on some kind of general optimization algorithm. I
| don't think that is what they are claiming though, even if it
| does kind of seem like it's being presented that way.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| > Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five
| minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10
| septillion years -- a number that vastly exceeds the age of the
| Universe.
|
| What computation would that be?
|
| Also, what is the relationship, if any, between quantum computing
| and AI? Are these technologies complementary?
| ra7 wrote:
| It's in the article. Random circuit sampling benchmark:
| https://research.google/blog/validating-random-circuit-sampl...
| crote wrote:
| Is it really fair to call that "computation"? I am
| _definitely_ not an expert, but it seems they are just doing
| a meaningless operation which happens to be trivial on a
| quantum computer but near-impossible to simulate on a
| classical computer.
|
| To me that sounds a bit like saying my "sand computer"
| (hourglass) is way faster than a classical computer, because
| it'd take a classical computer trillions of years to
| _exactly_ simulate the final position of every individual
| grain of sand.
|
| Sure, it proves that your quantum computer is actually a
| _genuine_ quantum computer, but it 's not going to be topping
| the LINPACK charts or factoring large semiprimes any time
| soon, is it?
| becquerel wrote:
| As they say explicitly in the article, this is like
| criticizing the first rocket to reach the edge of space for
| not getting anywhere useful.
| andrewla wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly what it is doing [1]. The area of
| research is Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum, and has
| arisen specifically to prove that quantum supremacy is
| possible in practice. It is currently the focus of pretty
| much all quantum computing research because attempts to
| produce a generalized quantum computer have all failed
| miserably. Existing practical quantum computers (like
| DWave) perform various annealing tasks but have basically
| proven to be inferior to probablistic algorithms computing
| the same task.
|
| To date all attempt to produce valid claims of quantum
| supremacy via this channel have failed on closer
| inspection, and there is no reason to assume otherwise in
| this case until researchers have had time to look at the
| paper. There's a number of skeptics in the quantum
| computing field that believe that this is simply not
| possible.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42369463
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Are DWave still in the running? They used my
| PerfectTablePlan table seating software back in 2007 as
| the front end to demonstrate solving a combinatorial
| seating problem: https://www.perfecttableplan.com/newslet
| ters/newsletter10_we...
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| "Also, what is the relationship, if any, between quantum
| computing and AI? Are these technologies complementary?"
|
| AI is limited in part by the computation available at training
| and runtime. If your computer is 10^X times faster, then your
| model is also "better". Thats why we have giant warehouses full
| of H100 chips pulling down a few megawatts from the grid right
| now. Quantum computing could theoretically allow your phone to
| do that.
| spencerflem wrote:
| A quantum computer is not just a 10^X faster normal computer.
|
| Are there AI algorithms that would benefit from quantum?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Makes sense. My brain is able to do that work on milliwatts.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Actually about 20 W -- if you ignore the 80 W used by the
| rest of the body (which seems debatable). And clearly far
| more than this was required to 'train' the human brain to
| the level of intelligence we have today.[1] But this still
| probably doesn't take away from your point. The human brain
| seems to be many orders of magnitude more efficient than
| our most advanced AI technology.
|
| Though the more I think about this, the more I wonder how
| they really would compare if you made a strictly apples-to-
| apples comparison.
|
| [1]
| https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/12385/how-
| muc...
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| > Also, what is the relationship, if any, between quantum
| computing and AI? Are these technologies complementary?
|
| Ongoing research.
|
| The main idea of quantum machine learning is that qubits make
| an exponentially high-dimensional space with linear resources,
| so can store and compute a lot of data easily.
|
| However, getting the data in and results out of the quantum
| computer is tricky, and if you need many iterations in your
| optimization, that may destroy any advantage you have from
| using quantum computers.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > Also, what is the relationship, if any, between quantum
| computing and AI? Are these technologies complementary?
|
| AI is quite good in producing the meaningless drivel needed for
| quantum computing related press releases.
| sys32768 wrote:
| In other words, get off the cloud so nobody has your encrypted
| data which they will be able to crack in a few minutes five or
| ten years from now?
| noident wrote:
| It depends on the algorithm you use to encrypt your data.
|
| Only asymmetric cryptography is threatened. There is no
| realistic threat to symmetric encryption like AES.
|
| If you are encrypting your cloud data with ed25519 or RSA, then
| yes, a quantum computer could theoretically someday crack them.
| codeulike wrote:
| They opened the API for it and I'm sending requests but the
| response always comes back 300ms before I send the request, is
| there a way of handling that with try{} predestined{} blocks? Or
| do I need to use the Bootstrap Paradox library?
| timcobb wrote:
| What does Gemini say?
| KTibow wrote:
| It responds with 4500 characters:
| https://hst.sh/olahososos.md
| wk_end wrote:
| Finally, INTERCAL's COME FROM statement has a practical use.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Have you tried using the Schrodinger Exception Handler? It
| catches errors both before and after they occur simultaneously,
| until you observe the stack trace.
| nobrains wrote:
| What happens when you don't send the request after receiving
| the response? Please try and report back.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| You unlock the "You've met a terrible fate." achievement [1]
|
| [1] https://outerwilds.fandom.com/wiki/Achievements
| ukuina wrote:
| Please report back and try.*
| cloudking wrote:
| The answer is yes and no, simultaneously
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| Did you try staring on your IP packets while sending the
| requests?
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Try using inverse promises. You get back the result you wanted,
| but if you don't then send the request the response is useless.
|
| It's a bit like Jeopardy, really.
| dtquad wrote:
| >They opened the API for it and I'm sending requests but the
| response always comes back 300ms before I send the request
|
| For a brief moment I thought this was some quantum-magical side
| effect you were describing and not some API error.
| kernal wrote:
| >Willow's performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It
| performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one
| of today's fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If
| you want to write it out, it's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| years. This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in
| physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends
| credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many
| parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a
| multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.
|
| A much simpler explanation is that your benchmark is severely
| flawed.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| "Severely flawed" is a matter of interpretation, and I don't
| want to argue for or against.
|
| But to put into context, these numbers are likely accurate, but
| represent the time it would take for a very naive classical
| algorithm (possibly brute-force, I am unsure).
|
| For example, the previous result claimed it would take Summit
| 10,000 years to do the same calculation as the Sycamore quantum
| chip. However, other researchers were able to reproduce results
| classically using tensor-network-based methods in 14.5 days
| using a "relatively small cluster". [1]
|
| [1] G. Kalachev, P. Panteleev, P. Zhou, and M.-H. Yung,
| "Classical sampling of random quantum circuits with bounded
| fidelity," arXiv.org, https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.15083
| (accessed Dec. 9, 2024).
| xnx wrote:
| Is anyone else even close to Google in this space? (e.g. on the
| "System Metrics" the blog defines)
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| I would expect IBM, but I can't find any information on their
| system metrics based on a quick google search.
|
| Would love if someone could weight in.
| lanthissa wrote:
| not publicly
| taf2 wrote:
| IonQ - they are powering AWS solution here:
| https://aws.amazon.com/braket/quantum-computers/ionq/
|
| Not sure if they are close in terms of specs but looks like
| they are a viable solution and seeing an increase in
| utilization over the last year... Seems both are pretty
| interesting to keep an eye on.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| Main players IMHO are IBM and Quantinuum, the latter employing
| different platform (ions). Neither could perform the same
| experiment I think, but have their own advantages. QuEra also
| looks good but are not as mature yet imho.
| fguerraz wrote:
| Am I oversimplifying in thinking that they've demonstrated that
| their quantum computer is better than at simulating a quantum
| system than a classical computer?
|
| In which case, should I be impressed? I mean sure, it sounds like
| you've implemented a quantum VM.
| TachyonicBytes wrote:
| Simulating a quantum system is a hard challenge and it's
| actually how Feynman proposed the quantum computing paradigm in
| the first place. It's basically the original motive.
| freetonik wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| I've seen lots of people dismissing this as if it isn't
| impressive or important. I've watched one video where the
| author said in a deprecating manner "quantum computers are
| good for just two things: generating random numbers and
| simulating quantum systems".
|
| It's like saying "the thing is good for just two things:
| making funny noises and producing infinite energy".
|
| (Also, generating random numbers is pretty useful, but I
| digress)
| slater wrote:
| I bet Vimeo videos will still chug on it
| TachyonicBytes wrote:
| Link to the actual article:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08449-y
| qnleigh wrote:
| and the arXiv preprint, which isn't paywalled
| https://arxiv.org/html/2408.13687v1
| zelon88 wrote:
| > It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs
| in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in
| a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.
|
| Can someone explain to me how he made the jump from "we achieved
| a meaninful threshold in quantum computing performance" to "The
| multiverse is probably real."
| dekhn wrote:
| The explanation is that Hartmut Neven has a bunch of sci-fi
| beliefs and somehow has managed to hold onto his job and even
| get to write parts of press releases.
| radioactivist wrote:
| Some of these results have been on the arxiv for a few months
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13687) -- are there any details on
| new stuff besides this blog post? I can't find anything on the
| random circuit sampling in the preprint (or its early access
| published version).
| qnleigh wrote:
| The peer-reviewed version at Nature has more technical details
| about the processor itself.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Imagine your civilization develops quantum computing technology
| and it's for... advertising.
|
| "What is their mission? Cure cancer? Eliminate poverty? Explore
| the universe? No, their goal: to sell another fucking Nissan."
| --Scott Galloway
| mperham wrote:
| That's how you monetize attention, digital consumption. If you
| aren't paying for it, you are the product being sold.
| NoOn3 wrote:
| In modern world, sometimes, even if you pay for it, it
| doesn't always give guarantees... :(
| softwaredoug wrote:
| With this plus the weather model announcement. I'm curious what
| people think about the meta question on why corporate labs like
| Google DeepMind etc seem to make more progress on big problems
| than academia?
|
| There are a lot of critiques about academia. In particular that
| it's so grant obsessed you have to stay focused on your next
| grant all the time. This environment doesnt seem to reward
| solving big problems but paper production to prove the last grant
| did something. Yet ostensibly we fund fundamental public research
| precisely for fundamental changes. The reality seems to be the
| traditional funding model create incremental progress within
| existing paradigms.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| I did quantum computing research in university. We did
| meaningful work and published meaningful research.
|
| Around 50% of our time was spent working in Overleaf making
| small improvements to old projects so that we could submit to
| some new journal or call-for-papers. We were always doing peer
| review or getting peer reviewed. We were working with a lot of
| 3rd-party tools (e.g. FPGAs, IBM Q, etc). And our team was
| constantly churning due to people getting their degrees and
| leaving, people getting too busy with coursework, and people
| deciding they just weren't interested anymore.
|
| Compare that to the corporate labs: They have a fully
| proprietary ecosystem. The people who developed that ecosystem
| are often the ones doing research on/with it. They aren't
| taking time off of their ideas to handle peer-review processes.
| They aren't taking time off to handle unrelated coursework.
| Their researchers don't graduate and start looking for
| professor positions at other universities.
|
| It's not surprising in the slightest that the corporate labs do
| better. They're more focused and better suited for long-term
| research.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I wonder what makes research different than product
| development at a company?
|
| Because in product development, there can be short-sighted
| industry decisions based on quarterly returns. I've also seen
| a constant need to justify outcomes based on KPIs etc, and
| constantly justifying your work, etc.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| Research _is_ product development. Successful companies
| treat it with respect.
|
| > Because in product development, there can be short-
| sighted industry decisions based on quarterly returns. I've
| also seen a constant need to justify outcomes based on KPIs
| etc, and constantly justifying your work, etc.
|
| I have seen this as well. It's extremely common (especially
| among publicly-owned companies) and frustrating. But it's
| not ubiquitous. Consider LM's Skunkworks or Apple's quiet
| development of the iPhone, and compare it to companies that
| finish a product and then focus on cutting costs / nickel-
| and-diming their customers.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Where exactly do you think the idea for a quantum computer came
| from in the first place?
| andrewla wrote:
| This is yet another attempt to posit NISQ results (Noisy
| Intermediate Scale Quantum) as demonstrations of quantum
| supremacy. This does not allow us to do useful computational
| work; it's just making the claim that a bathtub full of water can
| do fluid dynamic simulations faster than a computer with a
| bathtub-full-of-water-number-of-cores can do the same
| computation.
|
| If history is any guide we'll soon see that there are problems
| with the fidelity (the system they use to verify that the results
| are "correct") or problems with the difficulty of the underlying
| problem, as happened with Google's previous attempt to
| demonstrate quantum supremacy [1].
|
| [1] https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2024/12/09/the-case-
| against-g... -- note that although coincidentally published the
| same day as this announcement, this is talking about Google's
| previous results, not Willow.
| cryptozeus wrote:
| QTUM
| cloudking wrote:
| Contains MSTR and not GOOG...
| cryptozeus wrote:
| Point is to get in before goog gets in
| djoldman wrote:
| I wonder if anyone else will be forced to wait on
| https://scottaaronson.blog/ to tell us if this is significant.
| gloriousduke wrote:
| I was about to add a similar comment. Definitely interested to
| read his evaluation and whether there is more hype than
| substance here, though I'm guessing it may take some time.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| He told when the preprint was published
|
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8310
| qnleigh wrote:
| He's already blogged about it a bit here
|
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8310#comments
|
| and here
|
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8329
|
| though I bet he will have more to say now that the paper is
| officially out.
| bn-l wrote:
| This is weird. I got this pop up halfway through reading:
|
| > After reading this article, how has your perception of Google
| changed? Gotten better Gotten worse Stayed the same
| beyondCritics wrote:
| >It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs
| in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in
| a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.
|
| Makes sense, or doesn't it? What's your take on the multiverse
| theory?
| dom96 wrote:
| Can anyone comment on how this chip is built? What does the
| hardware look like?
| stan_kirdey wrote:
| Is anyone fine-tuning llama to write Q#? I feel LLMs can be a
| helpful tool in learning how to code quantum systems.
| dtquad wrote:
| Do Americans still want to breakup the big US tech companies like
| Google? With proper regulation it feels like their positive
| externalities, like this, is good for humanity.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| "Proper regulation" may involve breaking companies into pieces
| such that they cannot dominate industries and deprive the
| public the option of choosing a different provider for the
| services they provide. Does an Alphabet subsidiary working on
| quantum computer research require 90% of search traffic to go
| through Google? Or for Android handsets to send a really
| phenomenal amount of telemetry back to the mothership with no
| real recourse for the average user?
| skort wrote:
| The key words here are "proper regulation". In an era where
| industries have captured governmental bodies, there will likely
| be no such regulation, and these tech companies will continue
| to siphon up resources and funnel them to a handful at the top.
|
| A quote from the article is especially ludicrous: > to benefit
| society by advancing scientific discovery, developing helpful
| applications, and tackling some of society's greatest
| challenges
|
| You don't need a quantum computer to do this. We can solve
| housing and food scarcity today, arguably our greatest
| challenges. Big tech has been claiming that it's going to solve
| all of our problems for decades now and it has yet to put up.
|
| If you want this type of technology to be made and do actual
| good, we need publicly funded research institutions. Tech won't
| save us.
| correlator wrote:
| I met julian touring UCSB as perspective grad students. We sat
| together at dinner and he was really smart, kind, and outgoing.
| Great to see him presenting this work!
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