[HN Gopher] Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with a ...
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Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with a VIC-20, an
Abacus, and a Dog
Author : teddyh
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-07-18 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eprint.iacr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eprint.iacr.org)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44538693
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| > We verified this by taking a recently-calibrated reference dog,
| Scribble, depicted in Figure 6, and having him bark three times,
| thus simultaneously factorising both 15 and 21. This process
| wasn't as simple as it first appeared because Scribble is very
| well behaved and almost never barks.
| trhway wrote:
| one can always press the door bell button - works like a charm
| with my Chihuahua. Though he prefers to factorize numbers more
| like 529 than 21.
| tomgag wrote:
| I guess I'll post it here as well. This is my personal take on
| the whole story: https://gagliardoni.net/#20250714_ludd_grandpas
|
| A relevant quote: "this is your daily reminder that "How large is
| the biggest number it can factorize" is NOT a good measure of
| progress in quantum computing. If you're still stuck in this
| mindset, you'll be up for a rude awakening."
|
| Related: this is from Dan Bernstein:
| https://blog.cr.yp.to/20250118-flight.html#moon
|
| A relevant quote: "Humans faced with disaster tend to
| optimistically imagine ways that the disaster will be avoided.
| Given the reality of more and more user data being encrypted with
| RSA and ECC, the world will be a better place if every effort to
| build a quantum computer runs into some insurmountable physical
| obstacle"
| jgeada wrote:
| Except that factorization is exactly what is needed to break
| encryption, and so knowing what QC can do in that realm of
| mathematics and computing is _exactly_ the critical question
| that needs to be asked.
|
| And a reminder that in the world of non-QC computing, right
| from its very roots, the ability of computers improved in mind
| boggling large steps _every_ year.
|
| QC records, other than the odd statistic about how many bits
| they can make, have largely not made _any_ strides in being
| able to solve real world sized problems (with exception of
| those that use QCs purely as an analog computer to model QC
| behavior)
| tomgag wrote:
| I beg you to read the full story and to not extrapolate from
| the quote.
|
| Also, in the world of QC, right from its very roots, the
| ability of QC improved in mind boggling large steps every
| year. It's only that you cannot see it if you only look at
| the wrong metric, i.e., factorization records.
|
| It's a bit like saying "classical computing technology has
| not improved for 50 years, it's only recently that we finally
| start to have programs that are able to write other
| programs".
| madars wrote:
| A great resource for visually seeing progress is
| https://sam-jaques.appspot.com/quantum_landscape (click
| "Prev"/"Next" to see other years) - it makes very clear
| that incredible progress _is_ happening - this is a log-log
| plot.
| jgeada wrote:
| There is a reason QC factorization records haven't shifted
| much over the past years. Number of qubits by themselves
| isn't enough. You to be able to do computation on them and
| for long enough to run Shor's algorithm till it produces a
| solution. How the qubits are connected, how reliable the
| logic gates are and how long you can maintain the quantum
| coherence with enough fidelity to get results is equally
| important.
|
| That no significant factorization milestones have moved is
| a huge critical black eye to this field. Even worse, that
| _no one_ has ever even been able to truly run Schors
| algorithm on even trivial numbers is a shocking indictment
| of the whole field.
| tomgag wrote:
| The reasons you listed are exactly why the lack of
| factorization records _should not_ be seen as a
| "critical black eye to this field", because they are not
| a relevant measure of progress. Again, think of the
| parallel with LLMs: it took decades to get out of the "AI
| winter", because that's what non-linear technological
| progress looks like.
|
| With QC, the risk (and I am not saying this is going to
| happen, but I'm saying that it is a non-overlookable
| risk) is that we end up transitioning from "QC can only
| factorize 15" to "RSA-2048 is broken" in such a sudden
| way that the industry has no time to adapt.
| mlyle wrote:
| I think the main thing is: quantum computing doesn't
| really work right now, at all.
|
| Imagine if you had crummy, unreliable transistors. You
| couldn't build any computing machine out of them.
|
| Indeed, in the real world progress looked like:
|
| * Useless devices (1947)
|
| * Very limited devices (hearing aids)
|
| * Hand-selected, lab devices with a few hundred
| transistors, computing things as stunts (1955)
|
| * The IBM 1401-- practical transitorized computers
| (1959)-- because devices got reliable enough and
| ancillary technologies like packaging improved.
|
| In other words, there was a pattern of many years of
| seemingly negligible progress and then a sudden step once
| the foundational component reached a critical point. I
| think that's the point of the person you're talking to
| about this.
|
| And then just a couple of years later we had the
| reliability to move to integrated circuits for logic.
|
| If you looked at the "transistorized factorization
| record" it would be static for several years, before
| making a couple steps of several orders of magnitude
| each.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _A better measure of progress (valid for cryptanalysis, which
| is, anyway, a very minor aspect of why QC are interesting IMHO)
| would be: how far are we from fully error-corrected and
| interconnected qubits? I don 't know the answer, or at least I
| don't want to give estimates here. But I know that in the last
| 10 or more years, all objective indicators in progress that
| point to that cliff have been steadily improving: qubit
| fidelity, error rate, coherence time, interconnections... At
| this point I don't think it's wise to keep thrashing the field
| of quantum security as "academic paper churning"._
|
| I think the problem is that "objective indicators pointing to
| the cliff" is pretty handwavy. Could there be a widely agreed-
| upon function of qubit fidelity, error rate, coherence time,
| and interconnections that measures, even coarsely, how far we
| are from the cliff? It seems like the cliff has been ten years
| away for a very long time, so you might forgive an outsider for
| believing there has been a lot of motion without progress.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| After having read this paper I'm busy working on the replication
| of String Theory with a plate of Spaghetti, a packet of instant
| Ramen noodles and a pair of Octopuses. I would have used a single
| octopus but those 8 arms don't cover the 12 dimensions in String
| Theory. Technically a single squid might suffice - it has 8 arms,
| 2 tentacles and 2 fins which makes 12 - but that wouldn't be fair
| to the dimensions which get stuck with the fins while others get
| to walk away with those tentacles.
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