[HN Gopher] IBM Delivers New Quantum Package
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IBM Delivers New Quantum Package
Author : donutloop
Score : 47 points
Date : 2025-11-13 09:24 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.ibm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.ibm.com)
| pm90 wrote:
| I've been bit by the mass marketing nonsense of "Watson" but IBM
| Research does some pretty good work, and their progress on
| Quantum Computing seems to be "real"; and certainly more reliable
| than Microsoft (shocked!).
| jimmar wrote:
| > IBM anticipates that the first cases of verified quantum
| advantage will be confirmed by the wider community by the end of
| 2026.
|
| In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy [1]. I'm truly confused
| about what quantum computing can do today, or what it's likely to
| be able to do in the next decade.
|
| [1] https://www.nasa.gov/technology/computing/google-and-nasa-
| ac...
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| There's legitimately interesting research in using it to
| accelerate certain calculations. For example, usually you see a
| few talks at chemistry conferences on how it's gotten
| marginally faster at (very basic) electronic structure
| calculations. Also some neat stuff in the optimization space.
| Stuff you keep your eye on hoping it's useful in 10 years.
|
| The most similar comparison is AI stuff, except even that has
| found some practical applications. Unlike AI, there isn't
| really much practicality for quantum computers right now beyond
| bumping up your h-index
|
| Well, maybe there is one. As a joke with some friends after a
| particularly bad string of natural 1's in D&D, I used IBM's
| free tier (IIRC it's 10 minutes per month) and wrote a dice
| roller to achieve maximum randomness.
| NickC25 wrote:
| that was my understanding too - in the fields of chemistry,
| materials science, pharmaceutical development, etc... quantum
| tech is somewhat promising and might be pretty viable in
| those specific niche fields within the decade.
| Y_Y wrote:
| The trouble with quantum supremacy results is they disappear as
| soon as you observe them (carefully).
|
| Sorry for that, but seriously, I'd treat this kind of claim
| like any other putative breakthrough (room-temperature
| superconductors spring to mind), until it's independently
| verified it's worthless. The punishment for crying wolf is
| minimal and by the time you're shown to be bullshitting the
| headlines have moved on.
|
| The other method, of course, is to just obsessively check Scott
| Aaronson's blog.
| mapmeld wrote:
| IBM challenged that the 2019 case could be handled by a
| supercomputer [1].
|
| The main issue is that these algorithms where today's early
| quantum computers have an advantage were specifically designed
| to be demonstration problems. All of the tasks that people
| previously wanted a quantum computer to do are still
| impractical with today's hardware.
|
| [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/google-and-ibm-clash-over-
| qua...
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| "Qiskit capabilities show 24 percent increase in accuracy" what
| was it before? What good is a computer that is not 100% accurate?
| Do I have to run a function 1000x to get some average 99% chance
| the output is correct?
| mushufasa wrote:
| One of my colleagues read a paper about quantum computing
| techniques to solve complex optimization problems (the domain
| of complex mixed integer solvers) and tried it out for a
| financial portfolio optimization, replicating the examples
| provided by one of the quantum computing companies during a
| trial period.
|
| The computer *did not* produce the same results each time, and
| often the results were wrong. The service provider's support
| staff didn't help -- their response was effectively "oh
| shucks."
|
| We discontinued considering quantum computing after that. Not
| suitable for our use-case.
|
| Maybe quantum computing would be applicable if you were trying
| to crack encryption, wherein getting the right result once is
| helpful regardless of how many wrong answers you get in the
| process.
| a_vanderbilt wrote:
| Essentially correct. With a quantum computer you do multiple
| runs and average the result.
| jfengel wrote:
| (Right now "computers that aren't 100% accurate" are all the
| rage, even without quantum computing. Though a lot of people
| are wondering if that's any good, too.)
|
| They're especially good for oracle-type problems, where you can
| verify an answer much faster than you can find them. NP
| problems are an especially prominent example of that. If it's
| wrong, you try again.
|
| In theory it might take a very long time to find the answer.
| But even if you've only got 25% accuracy, the odds of you being
| wrong 10 times in a row are only 6%. Being wrong 100 times in a
| row is a number so small it requires scientific notation
| (10^-13). It's worth it to be able to solve an otherwise
| exponential problem.
|
| Quantum computers have error bounds, and you can use that to
| tune your error rate to being-hit-by-a-cosmic-ray level of
| acceptability.
|
| It's still far from clear that they can build general-purpose
| quantum computers big enough to do anything useful. But the
| built-in error factors are not, in themselves, a bar.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Many classical information processing devices are less than
| 100% reliable. Wifi (or old school dialup) will drop a non-
| trivial number of packets. RAM chips have some non-zero amount
| of unreliability, but in most cases we don't notice [1].
| Computer processors in space will similarly fail due to cosmic
| ray bombardment. In all cases, you mitigate such problems by
| adding redundancy or error correction.
|
| Quantum computer hardware is similarly very error-prone, and it
| is unlikely that we will ever build quantum hardware which will
| have ignorable levels of error. However, people have developed
| many techniques, often much more sophisticated that in the
| classical domain, for handling the fragility of quantum
| hardware. I am not familiar with the details of recent
| improvements in qiskit, but they are referring to improvements
| in specific "error mitigation" techniques implemented within
| qiskit. These techniques will be used in tandem with others
| methods like error correction to create quantum computers that
| give you answers with close to but less than 100% chance of
| success.
|
| As you say, in these cases, you will repeat your simulation a
| few times and take a majority vote.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Related Qiskit Tutorial Video[0] "This tutorial covers advanced
| techniques for implementing the Quantum Approximate Optimization
| Algorithm (QAOA) at the utility scale using Qiskit. In this
| video, we walk through how to build, optimize, and run QAOA for
| real world optimization problems on real IBM Quantum hardware.
| This series is designed for quantum computing practitioners who
| are ready to move beyond basic examples and start running large
| scale, hardware aware algorithms. We explore how to transition
| from theory to practical execution, covering algorithm
| development, circuit optimization, hybrid workflows, and best
| practices for hardware performance. Whether you are expanding
| your QAOA skills or preparing to run your own research
| experiments, this tutorial will help you strengthen your
| understanding of utility scale quantum computing with Qiskit."
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBfK-l-qSNk
| mushufasa wrote:
| I happen to know IBM made some great hires -- one of my
| classmates who was excellent in the field, who had impressive
| quantum computing nature publications before graduation, worked
| at IBM for the past several years.
|
| Though it looks like he recently switched to working at Google
| AI...
|
| https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaxMJzQAAAAJ&hl=en
| IsTom wrote:
| Sooo... are we factoring 21 without shortcuts yet?
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