[HN Gopher] Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum ...
___________________________________________________________________
Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on
hardware
Author : AbhishekParmar
Score : 344 points
Date : 2025-10-22 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| Bootvis wrote:
| This seems like an actually useful computation to do, unlike
| earlier results. Is that a reasonable reading of this article?
| portaouflop wrote:
| No it's still completely useless for the real world. Also not
| actually verifiable
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Classic quantum
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Now verifiably useless in real life
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| > demonstrates the first-ever algorithm to achieve verifiable
| quantum advantage on hardware.
|
| Am I crazy or have I heard this same announcement from Google and
| others like 5 times at this point?
| ortusdux wrote:
| I'd classify this one as different as it accompanies a
| publication in Nature -
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6
| rowanG077 wrote:
| How is an accompanying publication in nature worth anything
| in this context?
| jonas21 wrote:
| It's unlikely that it would be accepted for publication in
| a top peer-reviewed journal if there wasn't something
| novel.
| nicce wrote:
| I think it was in Nature last time as well...
| joshuaissac wrote:
| It's the third one I am seeing from Google specifically.
| auxiliarymoose wrote:
| My understanding is that this one is "verifiable" which means
| you get a reproducible result (i.e. consistent result comes out
| of a computation that would take much longer to do
| classically).
|
| Non-verifiable computations include things like pulling from a
| hard-to-compute probability distribution (i.e. random number
| generator) where it is faster, but the result is inherently not
| the same each time.
| corranh wrote:
| Main caveat is that it's verifiable (by them) but repeatable by
| others (in principle).
| portaouflop wrote:
| So actually it's neither verifiable or repeatable in any real-
| works definition of the words.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| This is your second comment in this thread (as far as I've
| scrolled) saying this without an explanation. Could you
| elaborate on why?
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Related papers
|
| The idea: Quantum Computation of Molecular Structure Using Data
| from Challenging-To-Classically-Simulate Nuclear Magnetic
| Resonance Experiments
| https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuan...
|
| Verifying the result by another quantum computer (it hasn't been
| yet): Observation of constructive interference at the edge of
| quantum ergodicity
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6
| markx2 wrote:
| > In physics, a quantum (pl.: quanta) is the minimum amount of
| any physical entity (physical property) involved in an
| interaction.
|
| Not a big leap then.
| chuckadams wrote:
| I see what you did there. Shame a lot of other people didn't.
| Imnimo wrote:
| As with any quantum computing news, I will wait for Scott
| Aaronson to tell me what to think about this.
| lisper wrote:
| Why wait? Just go read the paper:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6
|
| In the last sentence of the abstract you will find:
|
| "These results ... indicate a viable path to practical quantum
| advantage."
|
| And in the conclusions:
|
| "Although the random circuits used in the dynamic learning
| demonstration remain a toy model for Hamiltonians that are of
| practical relevance, the scheme is readily applicable to real
| physical systems."
|
| So the press release is a little over-hyped. But this is real
| progress nonetheless (assuming the results actually hold up).
|
| [UPDATE] It should be noted that this is still a _very long_
| way away from cracking RSA. That requires quantum error
| correction, which this work doesn 't address at all. This work
| is in a completely different regime of quantum computing,
| looking for practical applications that use a quantum computer
| to simulate a physical quantum system faster than a classical
| computer can. The hardware improvements that produced progress
| in this area _might_ be applicable to QEC some day, this is not
| direct progress towards implementing Shor 's algorithm at all.
| So your crypto is still safe for the time being.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| SO... BTC goes to zero?
| deliriumchn wrote:
| no, not really, PQC is already being discussed in pretty
| much every relevant crypto thing for couple years alearady
| and there are multiple PQC algos ready to protect important
| data in banking etc as well
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I don't really understand the threat to banking. Let's
| say you crack the encryption key used in my bank between
| a java payment processing system and a database server.
| You can't just inject transactions or something. Is the
| threat that internal network traffic could be read?
| Transactions all go to clearing houses anyway. Is it to
| protect browser->webapp style banking? those all use ec
| by now anyway, and even if they don't how do you mitm
| this traffic?
|
| Where is the exact threat?
| conradev wrote:
| The big threat is passively breaking TLS, so it's browser
| traffic. Or, any internet traffic?
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Okay, but breaking that TLS (device->bank) would allow
| you to intercept the session keys and then decrypt the
| conversation. Alright, so now you can read I logged in
| and booked a transaction to my landlord or whatever. What
| else can you do? OTP/2FA code prevents you from re-using
| my credentials. Has it been demonstrated at all that
| someone who intercepts a session key is able to somehow
| inject into a conversation? It seems highly unlikely to
| me with TCP over the internet.
|
| So we are all in a collective flap that someone can see
| my bank transactions? These are pretty much public
| knowledge to governments/central banks/clearing houses
| anyway -- doesn't seem like all that big a deal to me.
|
| (I work on payment processing systems for a large bank)
| bawolff wrote:
| > Has it been demonstrated at all that someone who
| intercepts a session key is able to somehow inject into a
| conversation? It seems highly unlikely to me with TCP
| over the internet.
|
| if you can read the TLS session in general, you can
| capture the TLS session ticket and then use that to make
| a subsequent connection. This is easier as you dont have
| to be injecting packets live or make inconvinent packets
| disappear.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It seems like detecting a re-use like this should be
| reasonably easy, it would not look like normal traffic
| and we could flag this to our surveillance systems for
| additional checks on these transactions. In a post
| quantum world, this seems like something that would be
| everywhere anyway (and presumably, we would be using some
| other algo by then too).
|
| Somehow, I'm not all that scared. Perhaps I'm naive.. :}
| bawolff wrote:
| > those all use ec by now anyway
|
| As far as i am aware, eliptic curve is also vulnerable to
| quantum attacks.
|
| The threat is generally both passive eavesdropping to
| decrypt later and also active MITM attacks. Both of
| course require the attacker to be in a position to
| eavesdrop.
|
| > Let's say you crack the encryption key used in my bank
| between a java payment processing system and a database
| server.
|
| Well if you are sitting in the right place on the network
| then you can.
|
| > how do you mitm this traffic?
|
| Depends on the scenario. If you are government or ISP
| then its easy. Otherwise it might be difficult. Typical
| real life scenarios are when the victim is using wifi and
| the attacker is in the physical vicinity.
|
| Like all things crypto, it always depends on context.
| What information are you trying to protect and who are
| you trying to protect.
|
| All that said, people are already experimenting with PQC
| so it might mostly be moot by the time a quantum computer
| comes around. On the other hand people are still using
| md5 so legacy will bite.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| > Well if you are sitting in the right place on the
| network then you can.
|
| Not really. This would be if not instantly then when a
| batch goes for clearing or reconciliation, be caught --
| and an investigation would be immediately started.
|
| There are safeguards against this kind of thing that
| can't be really defeated by breaking some crypto. We have
| to protect against malicious employees etc also.
|
| One can not simply insert bank transactions like this.
| They are really extremely complicated flows here.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Flooding the system with forged messages that overwhelm
| the clearinghouse having to verify them sounds like a
| good way to bring down a banking system.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Sure, if a bank gets compromised you could in theory DOS
| a clearing house, but I'd be completely amazed if it
| succeeded. Those kind of anomalous spikes would be
| detected quickly. Not even imagining that each bank
| probably has dedicated instances inside each clearing
| house.
|
| These are fairly robust systems. You'd likely have a much
| better impact dossing the banks.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Yah, I suspect the banks pay a handsome sum to smarter
| people than you and me, and they've gamed this out
| already.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I build such systems ;)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| No, we're still not much closer to that event.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| If quantum computers crack digital crytography, traditional
| bank account goes to zero too because regular 'ol databases
| also use crytography techniques for communication.
| wcoenen wrote:
| If all else fails, banks can generate terabytes of random
| one-time pad bytes, and then physically transport those
| on tape to other banks to set up provably secure
| communication channels that still go over the internet.
|
| It would be a pain to manage but it would be safe from
| quantum computing.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| They could also use pre-shared keys with symmetric
| cryptography. AES-256-GCM is secure against quantum
| attack, no need to bother with one-time pads.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| Let's say I give you a function you can call to crack any
| RSA key. How are you hacking banks?
| bilsbie wrote:
| I don't see why bitcoin wouldn't update its software in
| such a case. The majority of minors just need to agree. But
| why wouldn't they if the alternative is going to zero?
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| Sir Alexander Dane: MINERS, not MINORS.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| That actually confused me. I thought he he meant "the
| majority of the minority" while I was pretty sure it's
| just a simple majority
| jacquesm wrote:
| "Ahhhh... now you tell me" (Formerly Prince Andrew, at
| some point).
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I'll tell you right now, no way my kids would agree until
| they're at least adults. They don't even know what
| asymmetric cryptography is.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I'm confused, are your kids major Bitcoin miners?
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| Not major miners, but minor miners (if you count
| Minecraft).
| jdiff wrote:
| GGP used the term "minors," GP is running with the typo.
| andrewla wrote:
| How could updating the software possibly make a
| difference here? If the encryption is cracked, then who
| is to say who owns which Bitcoin? As soon as I try to
| transfer any coin that I own, I expose my public key,
| your "Quantum Computer" cracks it, and you offer a
| competing transaction with a higher fee to send the
| Bitcoin to your slush fund.
|
| No amount of software fixes can update this. In theory
| once an attack becomes feasible on the horizon they could
| update to post-quantum encryption and offer the ability
| to transfer from old-style addresses to new-style
| addresses, but this would be a herculean effort for
| everyone involved and would require all holders (not
| miners) to actively update their wallets. Basically
| infeasible.
|
| Fortunately this will never actually happen. It's way
| more likely that ECDSA is broken by mundane means (better
| stochastic approaches most likely) than quantum computing
| being a factor.
| iwontberude wrote:
| As you alluded to, network can have two parallel chains
| where wallets can be upgraded by users asynchronously
| before PQC is "needed" (a long way away still) which will
| leave some wallets vulnerable and others safe. It's not
| that herculean as most wallets (not most BTC) are in
| exchanges. The whales will be sufficiently motivated to
| switch and everyone else it will happen in the
| background.
|
| A nice benefit is it solves the problem with Satoshi's
| (of course not a real person or owner) wallet. Satoshi's
| wallet becomes the defacto quantum advantage prize.
| That's a lot of scratch for a research lab.
| jwpapi wrote:
| Not even needed you can just copy network state of a
| specific moment in time and encrypt with a new algorithm
| that will be used from then on
| strbean wrote:
| The problem is that the owner needs to claim their wallet
| and migrate it to the new encryption. Just freezing the
| state at a specific moment doesn't help; to claim the
| wallet in the new system I just need the private key for
| the old wallet (as that's the sole way to prove
| ownership). In our hypothetical post-quantum scenario,
| anyone with a quantum computer can get the private key
| and migrate the wallet, becoming the de-facto new owner.
|
| I think this is all overhyped though. It seems likely we
| will have plenty of warning to migrate prior to achieving
| big enough quantum computers to steal wallets. Per
| wikipedia:
|
| > The latest quantum resource estimates for breaking a
| curve with a 256-bit modulus (128-bit security level) are
| 2330 qubits and 126 billion Toffoli gates.
|
| IIRC this is speculated to be the reason ECDSA was
| selected for Bitcoin in the first place.
| jjmarr wrote:
| > this would be a herculean effort for everyone involved
| and would require all holders (not miners) to actively
| update their wallets. Basically infeasible.
|
| Any rational economic actor would participate in a post-
| quantum hard fork because the alternative is losing all
| their money.
|
| If this was a company with a $2 trillion market cap
| there'd be no question they'd move heaven-and-earth to
| prevent the stock from going to zero.
|
| Y2K only cost $500 billion[1] adjusted for inflation and
| that required updating essentially every computer on
| Earth.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem#Cost
| orblivion wrote:
| Firstly I'd want to see them hash the whole blockchain
| (not just the last block) with the post-quantum algo to
| make sure history is intact.
|
| But as far as moving balances - it's up to the owners. It
| would start with anybody holding a balance high enough to
| make it worth the amount of money it would take to crack
| a single key. That cracking price will go down, and the
| value of BTC may go up. People can move over time as they
| see fit.
| bloppe wrote:
| > would require all holders (not miners) to actively
| update their wallets. Basically infeasible.
|
| It doesn't require _all_ holders to update their wallets.
| Some people would fail to do so and lose their money.
| That doesn 't mean the rest of the network can't do
| anything to save themselves. Most people use hosted
| wallets like Coinbase these days anyway, and Coinbase
| would certainly be on top of things.
|
| Also, you don't need to break ECDSA to break BTC. You
| could also do it by breaking mining. The block header has
| a 32-bit nonce at the very end. My brain is too smooth to
| know how realistic this actually is, but perhaps someone
| could do use a QC to perform the final step of SHA-256 on
| all 2^32 possible values of the nonce at once, giving
| them an insurmountable advantage in mining. If only a
| single party has that advantage, it breaks the Nash
| equilibrium.
|
| But if multiple parties have that advantage, I suppose
| BTC could survive until someone breaks ECDSA. All those
| mining ASICs would become worthless, though.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > The majority of minors just need to agree.
|
| That's an uncomfortably apt typo.
| udev4096 wrote:
| The problem is all the lost BTC wallets, _which is
| speculated to be a lot and also one of the biggest reason
| for the current BTC price_ , who obviously cannot upgrade
| to PQ. There is currently a radical proposal of
| essentially making all those lost wallets worthless,
| unless they migrate [1]
|
| [1] -
| https://github.com/jlopp/bips/blob/quantum_migration/bip-
| pos...
| shwaj wrote:
| I'm not sure there's a better alternative.
| chermi wrote:
| Hey, why are you bringing the kids into this! ;) "The
| majority of _minors_ "
| logtrees wrote:
| No, I don't think so. By the time quantum supremacy is
| really achieved for a "Q-Day" that could affect them or
| things like them, the existing blockchains which have
| already been getting hardened will have gotten even harder.
| Quantum computing could be used to further harden them, as
| well, rather than compromise them. Supposing that Q-Day
| brought any temporary hurdles to Bitcoin or Ethereum or
| related blockchains, well...due to their underlying nature
| resulting in justified Permanence, we would be able to
| simply reconstitute and redeploy them for their
| functionalities because they've already been sufficiently
| imbued with value and institutional interest as well. These
| are quantum-resistant hardenings.
|
| So I do not think these tools or economic substrate layers
| are going anywhere. They are very valuable for the
| particular kinds of applications that can be built with
| them and also as additional productive layers to the credit
| and liquidity markets nationally, internationally, and also
| globally/universally.
|
| So there is a lot of institutional interest, including
| governance interest, in using them to build better systems.
| Bitcoin on its own would be reduced in such justification
| but because of Ethereum's function as an engine which can
| drive utility, the two together are a formidable and
| quantum-resistant platform that can scale into the hundreds
| of trillions of dollars and in Ethereum's case...certainly
| beyond $1Q in time.
|
| I'm very bullish on the underlying technology, even beyond
| tokenomics for any particular project. The underlying
| technologies are powerful protocols that facilitate the
| development and deployment of Non Zero Sum systems at
| scale. With Q-Day not expected until end of 2020s or
| beginning of 2030s, that is a considerable amount of time
| (in the tech world) to lay the ground work for further
| hardening and discussions around this.
| tux3 wrote:
| Quantum advantage papers have a history of overpromising,
| this one looks interesting, but it would still seem wise to
| wait for a second opinion.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| > "These results ... indicate a viable path to practical
| quantum advantage"
|
| I'll add this to my list of useful phrases.
|
| Q: Hey AndrewStephens, you promised that task would be
| completed two days ago. Can you finish it today?
|
| A: Results indicate a viable path to success.
| iwontberude wrote:
| Charlie Brown, Lucy, football
| keeda wrote:
| An MBA, an engineer and a quantum computing physicist check
| into a hotel. Middle of the night, a small fire starts up
| on their floor.
|
| The MBA wakes up, sees the fire, sees a fire extinguisher
| in the corner of the room, empties the fire extinguisher to
| put out the fire, then goes back to sleep.
|
| The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, sees the fire
| extinguisher, estimates the extent of the fire, determines
| the exact amount of foam required to put it out including a
| reasonable tolerance, and dispenses exactly that amount to
| put out the fire, and then satisified that there is enough
| left in case of another fire, goes back to sleep.
|
| The quantum computing physicist wakes up, sees the fire,
| observes the fire extinguisher, determines that there is a
| viable path to practical fire extinguishment, and goes back
| to sleep.
| foota wrote:
| Meanwhile Schrodinger's cat sleeps peacefully in their
| carrier.
| adonovan wrote:
| Not quite sure why all the responses here are so cynical. I
| mean, it's a genuinely difficult set of problems, so of
| course the first steps will be small. Today's computers are
| the result of 80 astonishing years of sustained innovation
| by millions of brilliant people.
|
| Even as a Googler I can find plenty of reasons to be
| cynical about Google (many involving AI), but the quantum
| computing research lab is not one of them. It's actual
| scientific research, funded (I assume) mostly out of
| advertising dollars, and it's not building something
| socially problematic. So why all the grief?
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I completed my degree in computer science at age 22 - at
| that time Shor had just published his famous algorithm
| and the industry press was filled with articles on how
| quantum computing was just a few years away with just a
| few technical hurdles yet to be solved.
|
| I turned 50 years old this year, forgive an old man a few
| chuckles.
| toasted-subs wrote:
| A consistent theme of Quantum Computing is setting up the
| problem to have the hardwired achieve nicely to get a good
| news article to get more funding.
|
| Im pretty reluctant to make any negative comments about these
| kinds of posts be cause it will prevent actually achieving
| the desired outcome.
| bawolff wrote:
| Quantum computing hardware is still at its infancy.
|
| The problem is not with these papers (or at least not ones
| like this one) but how they are reported. If quantum
| computing is going to suceed it needs to do the baby steps
| before it can do the big steps, and at the current rate the
| big leaps are probably decades away. There is nothing wrong
| with that, its a hard problem and its going to take time.
| But then the press comes in and reports that quantum
| computing is going to run a marathon tomorrow which is
| obviously not true and confuses everyone.
| toasted-subs wrote:
| There in lies the problem. Hey can I have a few billion
| dollars for my baby doesn't really work out too well for
| investors or industry.
|
| The current situation with "AI" took off because people
| learned their lessons from the last round of funding cuts
| "AI winter".
|
| That being said any pushback against funding quantum
| research would be like chopped your own hands off.
| wnevets wrote:
| I'm waiting for Peter Gutmann[1] to tell me what to think about
| this.
|
| [1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237
| getnormality wrote:
| I will wait for a HN commenter to tell me what Scott Aaronson
| thinks about this.
| thedrexster wrote:
| this is my approach, as well, lol
| guywithahat wrote:
| As with most news, I'll be waiting for Scott Adams to tell me
| what to think about this
| amiga386 wrote:
| The text adventure guy, or the cartoonist who went batshit?
| cma wrote:
| Aaronson isn't a cartoonist, it was an AI cartoon from
| ChatGPT that an antisemite sent Aaronson in the mail which
| he then seemingly maliciously misattributed to Woit making
| people assume Aaronson went batshit.
|
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9098
|
| Aaronson did work at OpenAI but not on image generation,
| maybe you could argue the OpenAI safety team he worked on
| should be involved here but I'm pretty sure image
| generation was after his time, and even if he did work
| directly on image generation under NDA or something,
| attributing that cartoon to Aaronson would be like
| attributing a cartoon made in Photoshop by an antisemite to
| a random Photoshop programmer, unless he maliciously added
| antisemitic images to the training data or something.
|
| The most charitable interpretation that I think Aaronson
| also has offered is that Aaronson believed Woit was an
| antisemite because of a genocidal chain of events that in
| Aaronson's belief would necessarily happen with a
| democratic solution and that even if Woit didn't believe
| that that would be the consequence, or believed in
| democracy deontologically and thought the UN could step in
| under the genocide convention if any genocide began to be
| at risk of unfolding, the intent of Woit could be
| dismissed, and Woit could therefore be somehow be lumped in
| with the antisemite who sent Aaronson the image.
|
| Aaronson's stated belief also is that any claim that Isreal
| was commiting a genocide in the last few years is a blood-
| libel because he believes the population of Gaza is
| increasing and it can't be a genocide unless there is a
| population decrease during the course of it. This view of
| Aaronsno would imply things like if every male in Gaza was
| sterilized, and the UN stepped in and stopped it as a
| genocide, it would be a blood libel to call that genocide
| so long as the population didn't decrease during the course
| of it, even if it did decrease afterwards. But maybe he
| would clarify that it could include decreases that happen
| with a delayed effect of the actions. But these kind of
| strong beliefs of blood-libel I think are part of why he
| felt ok labeling the comic with Woit's name.
|
| I also don't think if the population does go down or has
| been going down he will say it was from a genocide, but
| rather that populations can go down from war. He's only
| proposing that a population must go down as a necessary
| criteria of genocide, not a sufficient one. I definitely
| don't agree with him, to me if Hamas carried out half of an
| Oct 7 every day it would clearly be a genocide even if that
| brought the replacement rate to 1.001 and it wouldn't
| change anything if it brought it to 0.999.
| amiga386 wrote:
| I think you're very, very confused.
|
| > guywithahat [...] I'll be waiting for Scott Adams to
| tell me what to think about this
|
| Scott _Adams_
|
| Text adventure guy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams_(game_designer)
|
| Batshit cartoonist:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
|
| (also, for fun, a cartoon by Scott _Aaronson_ and Zack
| Weinersmith: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-
| talk-3)
| guywithahat wrote:
| I meant Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The joke is
| just that they have similar names, and Adams does a lot
| of political/topical commentary in both his comics and
| podcast but isn't a good source since a lot of his work
| is comedy focused.
|
| I am unaware of any comics Aaronson made and I don't
| blame him for anything he did make or was loosely
| associated with. It is incredible to the extend people
| are willing to go to claim people are crazy though, both
| in regards to Adams and Aaronson.
| supernetworks_ wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07255
|
| This paper on verifiable advantage is a lot more compelling.
| With Scott Aaronson and Quantinuum among other great
| researchers
| nashashmi wrote:
| Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with
| universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have
| bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while
| having under experienced graduates. These costs will get
| forwarded to the consumer. The future won't have a lot of things
| that we have come to expect.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Nihilism is to trendy right now
| steego wrote:
| Nihilism is one response to disillusionment.
|
| Another response is to come to terms with a possibly
| meaningless and Sisyphean reality and to keep pushing the
| boulder (that you care about) up the hill anyway.
|
| I'm glad the poster is concerned and/or disillusioned about
| the hype, hyperbole and deception associated with this type
| of research.
|
| It suggests he still cares.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner
| with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have
| bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research
| while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get
| forwarded to the consumer. The future won't have a lot of
| things that we have come to expect._
|
| I don't disagree, but these days I'm happy to see any advanced
| research at all.
|
| Granted, too often I see the world through HN-colored glasses,
| but it seems like so many technological achievements are
| variations on getting people addicted to something in order to
| show them ads.
|
| Did Bellcore or Xerox PARC do a lot of university partnerships?
| I was into other things in those days.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Funnily enough I remember reading a comment a week or two ago
| decrying the death of corporate research labs like Bell Labs
| and Xerox PARC
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I don't think it's accurate to attribute some kind of altruism
| to these research universities. Have a look at some of those
| pay packages or the literal hedge funds that they operate. And
| they're mostly exempt from taxation.
| auxiliarymoose wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > in partnership with The University of California, Berkeley,
| we ran the Quantum Echoes algorithm on our Willow chip...
|
| And the author affiliations in the Nature paper include:
|
| Princeton University; UC Berkeley; University of Massachusetts,
| Amherst; Caltech; Harvard; UC Santa Barbara; University of
| Connecticut; UC Santa Barbara; MIT; UC Riverside; Dartmouth
| College; Max Planck Institute.
|
| This is very much in partnership with universities and they
| clearly state that too.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Thanks. I could not find any mention of it. This is good.
| chermi wrote:
| Did you bother looking at the author list? This is a grand
| statement that's easily refuted by just looking.
|
| Maybe you're thinking specifically of LLM labs. I agree this is
| happening there, but I wouldn't be as dramatic. Everywhere
| else, university-corporation/government lab partnerships are
| still going very strong.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Quantum is the new AI. It's just the new hype cycle of doom.
| jezzamon wrote:
| The barrier to entry seems a little higher than AI so it's at
| least a little limited in scope
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Negative points? Is no one else tired of hype outweighing the
| science?
| fooker wrote:
| Can someone explain if this is still the RCS problem or a similar
| one?
|
| My impression was that every problem a quantum computer solves in
| practice right now is basically reducible from 'simulate a
| quantum computer'
| seanhunter wrote:
| This is not the RCS problem or indeed anything from number
| theory.
|
| The announcement is about an algorithm which they are calling
| Quantum Echoes, where you set up the experiment, perturb one of
| the qbits and observe the "echoes" through the rest of the
| system.
|
| They use it to replicate a classical experiment in chemistry
| done using nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. They say they
| are able to reproduce the results of that conventional
| experiment and gather additional data which is unavailable via
| conventional means.
| qnleigh wrote:
| This is quite different from their previous random circuit
| sampling (RCS) experiments that have made headlines a few times
| in the past. The key difference from an applied standpoint is
| that the output of RCS is a random bitstring which is different
| every time you run the algorithm. These bitstrings are not
| reproducible, and also not particularly interesting, except for
| the fact that only a quantum computer can generate them
| efficiently.
|
| The new experiment generates the same result every time you run
| it (after a small amount of averaging). It also involves
| running a much more structured circuit (as opposed to a random
| circuit), so all-in-all, the result is much more 'under
| control.'
|
| As a cherry on top, the output has some connection to molecular
| spectroscopy. It still isn't that useful at this scale, but it
| is much more like the kind of thing you would hope to use a
| quantum computer for someday (and certainly more useful than
| generating random bitstrings).
| elAhmo wrote:
| Definitely not a quantum expert, but I have a feeling that news
| like this have been happening for more than a decade, without
| anything usable.
| terminalbraid wrote:
| It's what happens when companies are driven by profit rather
| than making accurate scientific statements that reputation is
| built by and further research funding is predicated on.
|
| Hyperbolic claims like this are for shareholders who aren't
| qualified to judge for themselves because they're interested in
| future money and not actual understanding. This is what happens
| when you delegate science to corporations.
| bobbyprograms wrote:
| Yeah but let's be honest they aren't going to be profiting
| off this. So maybe to help them feel they are contributing to
| a good cause
| seydor wrote:
| It's great funding for physics research. I don't care if it's
| useless, it beats spending on politics and surveillance
| ghurtado wrote:
| There's also the fact that the road to useful is littered
| with useless, because how else would you make progress?
| massung wrote:
| I'm no expert either, so I hope one can corroborate or correct
| me...
|
| My understanding though is that these steps are really the very
| beginning. Using a quantum computer with quantum algorithms to
| prove that it's possible.
|
| Once proven (which maybe article this is claiming?) the next
| step is actually creating a computer with enough qubits and
| entanglable pairs and low enough error rates that it can be
| used to solve larger problems at scale.
|
| Because my current understanding with claims like these is that
| they are likely true, but in the tiny.
|
| It'd be like saying "I have a new algorithm for factoring
| primes that is 10000x faster than the current best, but can
| only factor numbers up to 103."
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| the big problem with quantum advantage is that quantum computing
| is inherently error-prone and stochastic, but then they compare
| to classical methods that are exact
|
| let a classical computer use an error prone stochastic method and
| it still blows the doors off of qc
|
| this is a false comparison
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| They get the same result when they run it a second time and it
| matches the classical result; this is their key achievement (in
| addition to the speed).
| krastanov wrote:
| Stochasticity (randomness) is pervasively used in classical
| algorithms that one compares to. That is nothing new and has
| always been part of comparisons.
|
| "Error prone" hardware is not "a stochastic resource". Error
| prone hardware does not provide any value to computation.
| ashleyn wrote:
| We're all asking it: any impact on AES?
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The rule of thumb is that a working quantum computer that can
| run Grover's algorithm reduces the security of a symmetric
| cipher to half of its key size. That is, AES-128 should be
| considered to have a 64 bit key size, which is why it's not
| considered "quantum-safe."
|
| Edit: An effective key space of 2^64 is not secure according to
| modern-day standards. It was secure at the times of DES.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| AES-128 is quantum safe (more or less). 64 bit security in
| the classical domain isn't safe because you can parallelize
| across 2^20 computers trivially. Grover gives you 2^64 AES
| operations on a quantum coputer (probably ~2^70 gates or so
| before error correction or ~2^90 after error correction) that
| can't be parallelized efficiently. AES-128 is secure for the
| next century (but you might as well switch to aes-256 because
| why not)
| msm_ wrote:
| Is AES-256 more quantum resistant? It still has 16byte
| block size, so intuitively it should be equally vulnerable
| to Grover.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Grover's algorithm is sqrt(N) wrt domain size and the key
| is part of the domain of the function.
| seanhunter wrote:
| This is a chemistry experiment, so no.
| dlandis wrote:
| > Quantum computing-enhanced NMR could become a powerful tool in
| drug discovery, helping determine how potential medicines bind to
| their targets, or in materials science for characterizing the
| molecular structure of new materials like polymers, battery
| components or even the materials that comprise our quantum bits
| (qubits)
|
| There is a section in the article about future real world
| application, but I feel like these articles about quantum
| "breakthroughs" are almost always deliberately packed with
| abstruse language. As a result I have no sense about whether
| these suggested real world applications are a few years away or
| 50+ years away. Does anyone?
| jpadkins wrote:
| > As a result I have no sense about whether these suggested
| real world applications are a few years away or 50+ years away.
| Does anyone?
|
| not really. but that doesn't mean it's not worth striving for.
| Breakthrough to commercial application are notoriously hard to
| predict. The only way to find out is to keep pushing at the
| frontier.
| kantbtrue wrote:
| "13,000x faster" sounds huge, but I wonder what it's being
| compared to. Quantum speedups are always tricky to measure
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The article states: "...13,000 times faster on Willow than the
| best classical algorithm on one of the world's fastest
| supercomputers..."
|
| I agree it's not very precise without knowing which of the
| world's fastest supercomputers they're talking about, but there
| was no need to leave out this tidbit.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| The paper talks only about the Frontier supercomputer which
| is #2 on Top500. But I think it was an analysis rather than
| them actually running it.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I was being sarcastic because 13,000 times faster is 4
| orders of magnitude faster so it doesn't matter to which
| supercomputer it is compared.
| nicce wrote:
| I don't understand how these papers get accepted
| cannonpalms wrote:
| The field is nascent. The bar is not static.
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| "surpassing even the fastest classical supercomputers (13,000x
| faster)"
|
| "Quantum verifiability means the result can be repeated on our
| quantum computer -- or any other of the same caliber -- to get
| the same answer, confirming the result."
|
| "The results on our quantum computer matched those of traditional
| NMR, and revealed information not usually available from NMR,
| which is a crucial validation of our approach."
|
| It certainly seems like this time, there finally is a real
| advantage?
| seanhunter wrote:
| I've only skimmed the paper but it seems like the "information
| not usually available" from NMR is the Jacobian and Hessian of
| the Hamiltonian of the system.
|
| So basically you're able to go directly from running the
| quantum experiment to being able to simulate the dynamics of
| the underlying system, because the Jacobian and Hessian are the
| first and second partial derivatives of the system with respect
| to all of its parameters in matrix form.
| i-con wrote:
| Notice how they say "quantum advantage" not "supremacy" and "a
| (big) step toward real-world applications". So actually just
| another step as always. And I'm left to doubt if the classic
| algorithm used for comparison was properly optimised.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| I skimmed the paper so might have missed something, but iiuc
| there is no algorithm used for comparison. They did not run
| some well defined algorithm on some benchmark instances, they
| estimated the cost of simulating the circuits "through tensor
| network contraction" - I quote here not to scare but because
| this is where my expertise runs out.
| streptomycin wrote:
| FWIW "quantum advantage" and "quantum supremacy" are synonyms,
| some people just prefer the former because the latter reminds
| them of "white supremacy"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy#Criticism_of...
| i-con wrote:
| Good point, I had no idea. I actually thought they just
| restrained themselves this time :D
| TeeMassive wrote:
| The last time I heard a similar news from Google, it turned out
| they were solving a quantum phenomenon using a quantum
| phenomenon. It seems to be the same pattern here. Not to say it's
| not progress, but kind of feels like overhyped.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Idk. I get this is the median take across many comments, I
| don't mean to be disagreeable with a crowd. But I don't know
| why using quantum phenomena is a sign something's off. It's a
| quantum computer! But I know something is off with this take if
| it didn't strike you that way.
| fwip wrote:
| To me, it matters because it's a sign that it might not be
| particularly transferable as a method of computation.
|
| A wind tunnel is a great tool for solving aerodynamics and
| fluid flow problems, more efficiently than a typical
| computer. But we don't call it a wind-computer, because it's
| not a useful tool outside of that narrow domain.
|
| The promise of quantum computing is that it can solve useful
| problems outside the quantum realm - like breaking
| traditional encryption.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Good point, I guess that's why I find this comments section
| boring and not representative of the HN I've known for 16
| years: there's a sort of half-remembering it wasn't
| powerful enough to do something plainly and obviously
| useful yesterday.
|
| Then, we ignore today, and launder that into a gish-gallop
| of free-association, torturing the meaning of words to
| shoehorn in the idea that all the science has it wrong and
| inter alia, the quantum computer uses quantum phenomena to
| computer so it might be a fake useless computer, like a
| wind tunnel. _shrugs_
|
| It's a really unpleasant thing to read, reminds me of the
| local art school dropout hanging on my ear about crypto at
| the bar at 3 am in 2013.
|
| I get that's all people have to reach for, but personally,
| I'd rather not inflict my free-association on the world
| when I'm aware I'm half-understanding, fixated on the past
| when discussing something current, and I can't explain the
| idea I have as something concrete and understandable even
| when I'm using technical terms.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you assume everyone else is wrong from the start, then
| you won't like the comments, sure.
|
| And what the hell are you calling a gish gallop? They
| wrote four sentences explaining a single simple argument.
| If you design a way to make qubits emulate particle
| interactions, that's a useful tool, but it's not what
| people normally think of as a "computer".
|
| And whatever you're saying about anyone claiming "all the
| science has it wrong" is an argument that only exists
| inside your own head.
| refulgentis wrote:
| The fact an earlier demo was an RNG also, and this demo
| uses quantum phenomena (qubits) to look at quantum
| phenomena (molecules) does not mean quantum computing
| can't be a useful computer, a la a wind tunnel.
|
| It's not that I don't "agree with it", there's nothing to
| agree with. "Not even wrong", in the Pauli sense.
|
| I'd advise that when you're conjuring thoughts in other
| people's heads to make them mean, so you can go full
| gloves off and tell them off for what thoughts were in
| their head, and motivated their contributions to this
| forum, you pause, and consider a bit more. Especially in
| context of where you're encountering the behavior, say, a
| _online discussion forum_ vs. a dinner party where you
| 're observing a heated discussion among your children.
| tiahura wrote:
| Can it factor 21?
| nyeah wrote:
| Unfairly high bar. They're not magicians.
| FabHK wrote:
| So, "verifiable" here means "we ran it twice and got the same
| result"?
|
| > Quantum verifiability means the result can be repeated on our
| quantum computer -- or any other of the same caliber -- to get
| the same answer, confirming the result.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Sounds like N, not 2
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| It is not very clear from the text and from what I can say
| there is no "verifiability" concept in the papers they link.
|
| I think what they are trying to do is to contrast these to
| previous quantum advantage experiments in the following sense.
|
| The previous experiments involve sampling from some
| distribution, which is believed to be classically hard.
| However, it is a non-trivial question whether you succeed or
| fail in this task. Having perfect sampler from the same
| distribution won't allow you to easily verify the samples.
|
| On the other hand these experiments involve measuring some
| observable, i.e., the output is just a number and you could
| compare it to the value obtained in a different way (one a
| different or same computer or even some analog experimental
| system).
|
| Note that these observables are expectation values of the
| samples, but in the previous experiments since the circuits are
| random, all the expectation values are very close to zero and
| it is impossible to actually resolve them from the experiment.
|
| Disclaimer: this is my speculation about what they mean because
| they didn't explain it anywhere from what I can see.
| nine_k wrote:
| It means that they transcended the "works on my machine" stage,
| and can reliably run a quantum algorithm on more than one
| different quantum computer.
| cluckindan wrote:
| They haven't, though?
| nine_k wrote:
| At least they claim that: <<Quantum verifiability means the
| result can be repeated on our quantum computer -- _or any
| other of the same caliber_ -- to get the same answer,
| confirming the result. This repeatable, beyond-classical
| computation is the basis for scalable verification.>>
| (emph. mine)
|
| But apparently they haven't demonstrated the actual
| portability between two different quantum computers.
| jerkstate wrote:
| A key result here is the first demonstration of quantum
| supremacy; from TFA
|
| > This is the first time in history that any quantum computer
| has successfully run a verifiable algorithm that surpasses the
| ability of supercomputers.
| whatever1 wrote:
| I think I have read that before?
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Yes, from this very same FA,
|
| "Back in 2019, we demonstrated that a quantum computer
| could solve a problem that would take the fastest classical
| supercomputer thousands of years."
|
| The actual article has much more measured language, and in
| the conclusion section gives three criteria for "practical
| quantum advantage":
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6
|
| "(1) The observable can be experimentally measured with the
| proper accuracy, in our case with an SNR above unity. More
| formally, the observable is in the bounded-error quantum
| polynomial-time (BQP) class.
|
| (2) The observable lies beyond the reach of both exact
| classical simulation and heuristic methods that trade
| accuracy for efficiency.
|
| [...]
|
| (3) The observable should yield practically relevant
| information about the quantum system.
|
| [...] we have made progress towards (1) and (2). Moreover,
| a proof-of-principle for (3) is demonstrated with a dynamic
| learning problem."
|
| So none of the criteria they define for "practical quantum
| advantage" are fully met as far as I understand it.
|
| The key word is "practical" - you can get quantum advantage
| from precisely probing a quantum system with enough
| coherent qubits that it would be intractable on a classical
| computer. But that's exactly because a quantum computer
| _is_ a quantum system; and because of superposition and
| entanglement, a linear increase in the number of qubits
| means an exponential increase in computational complexity
| for a classical simulation. So if you 're able to implement
| and probe a quantum system of sufficient complexity (in
| this case ~40 qubits rather than the thousands it would
| take for Shor's algorithm), that is ipso facto "quantum
| advantage".
|
| It's still an impressive engineering feat because of the
| difficulty in maintaining coherence in the qubits with a
| precisely programmable gate structure that operates on
| them, but as far as I can see (and I've just scanned the
| paper and had a couple of drinks this evening) what it
| really means is that they've found a way to reliably
| implement in hardware a quantum system that they can
| accurately extract information from in a way that would be
| intractable to simulate on classical machines.
|
| I might well be missing some subtleties because of
| aforementioned reasons and I'm no expert, but it seems like
| the press release is unsurprisingly in the grayzone between
| corporate hype and outright deceit (which as we know is a
| large and constantly expanding multi-dimensional grayzone
| of heretofore unimagined fractal shades of gray)
| pred_ wrote:
| Normally, where I come from anyway, verifiability would refer
| to the ability to prove to a classical skeptic that the quantum
| device did what it's supposed to, cf. e.g. Mahadev
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01082), Aaronson
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.06930), in a strong, theoretical,
| sense. And that's indeed relevant in the context of proving
| advantage, as the earlier RCS experiments lacked that ability,
| so "demonstrating verifiable quantum advantage" would be quite
| the step forward. That doesn't appear to be what they did at
| all though. Indeed, the paper appears to barely touch on
| verifiability at all. And - unlike the press release - it
| doesn't claim to achieve advantage either; only to indicate "a
| viable path towards" it.
| leoc wrote:
| So the Scott Aaronson Full Employment Conjecture remains
| unrefuted?
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Afaik we are a decade or two away from quantum supremacy. All the
| AI monks, forget that if AI is the future, quantum supremacy is
| the present. And whoever controls the present, decides the
| future.
|
| Rememeber, it is not about quantum general computing, it's about
| implementing the quantum computation of Shor's algorithm
| cwmma wrote:
| but much like AI hype quantum hype is also way over played,
| yeah modern asymmetric encryption will be less secure, but even
| after you have quantum computers that can do Shor's algorithm
| it might be a while before there are quantum computers
| affordable enough for it to be an actual threat (i.e. it's not
| cheaper to just buy a zero day for the target's phone or
| something).
|
| But since we already have post quantum algorithms, the end
| state of cheap quantum computers is just a new equilibrium
| where people use the new algorithms and they can't be directly
| cracked and it's basically the same except maybe you can
| decrypt historical stuff but who knows if it's worth it.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| I was mostly talking about state actors buying quantum
| computers that are just built to run that particular
| algorithm and using it to snoop on poorer countries who
| cannot afford such tech. Plus all countries will have plenty
| of systems that have not been quantum proofed. The moment
| when it becomes affordable to a state actor until most state
| actors have access to such tech is likely to be a long time
| especially since no one will admit to possess such tech. And
| unlike nuclear weapons, it is much harder to prove whether or
| not someone has one
| Lapsa wrote:
| but can it run Doom?
| wiz21c wrote:
| Linux would be a start :-)
| junon wrote:
| I wouldn't hold my breath for Linux on a quantum computer.
| tbabej wrote:
| The chip would need to be scaled couple of orders of magnitude,
| but in principle, it is possible :) see
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.12162
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| I would like to hear from the classical computation people if
| they validate these results and claims:
|
| As many times in the past quantum supremacy was claimed, and
| then, other groups have shown they can do better with optimized
| classical methods.
| fHr wrote:
| Lol
| sambapa wrote:
| I think that quantum will be the next bubble
| krupan wrote:
| This type of announcement is definitely pumping air into it
| m3kw9 wrote:
| All thats need to verify is, is it faster than classical chips?
| Why do they need some other methods?
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