[HN Gopher] Physicists developing a quantum computer that's enti...
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Physicists developing a quantum computer that's entirely open
source
Author : tzury
Score : 183 points
Date : 2026-03-02 23:22 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (physics.aps.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (physics.aps.org)
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| Couldn't find any cost estimate, but from
| https://openquantumdesign.org/the-quantum-computer (scroll down
| to "What's Inside") I'm guessing 100's of k$ for the bill of
| materials (let alone keeping the thing going.)
|
| So the "you" in "your own" has to have pretty deep pockets...for
| a relatively low fidelity 30 qubit device.
| nanobuilds wrote:
| Okay so not a weekend project.
| spaqin wrote:
| Most of the cost is in overpriced laser systems; if that gets
| solved a trapped-ion system could be reproduced for few tens of
| thousands of USDs. Still not a hobby weekend project, but
| certainly more attainable for more universities.
| Aboutplants wrote:
| I was gonna say, at that price the cost in a University
| setting would be nothing in terms of the experience and
| teaching/learning opportunities provided. Game changer in
| terms of scaling education which bodes well for the future
| TurdF3rguson wrote:
| > So the "you" in "your own" has to have pretty deep
| pockets...for a relatively low fidelity 30 qubit device.
|
| Sure but once you buy it, all the "you"s in all the other
| universes get to have one too.
| roarcher wrote:
| And yet they won't split the bill with me. Bunch of
| freeloaders.
| bleudeballe wrote:
| Banking Company LLC presents: Quantum Loans(tm) "Your money
| is simultaneously yours and ours until you check your
| balance."
|
| Superposition Financing: Your loan exists in all possible
| amounts until observed. Checking your balance collapses the
| wavefunction -- so we recommend you simply... don't.
| Ignorance isn't just bliss, it's financially optimal.
|
| Multiverse Co-signing: Split the debt across all versions
| of yourself in the multiverse. Sure, some of you will
| default -- but statistically, infinite yous means infinite
| revenue for us.
|
| Entangled Interest Rates: Your rate is entangled with a
| partner borrower chosen at random. If they pay on time,
| your rate drops.
|
| Payment Clusters: Forget monthly installments. Payments
| arrive in probabilistic clusters -- sometimes three in a
| week, sometimes none for a year. We can't predict when, and
| neither can you. It's not a bug, it's quantum mechanics.
| devnonymous wrote:
| The real joke here is how close these quips are to the
| reality of modern day financial markets. Specifically,
| lending and hedging, are time entangled and value within
| the markets exist in superposition.
| ion_trapper wrote:
| This effort is likely aimed at industrial/academic entities and
| not "you" as in a single person. But anyway, it needs to be
| emphasized that the phrase "quantum computer" is today used to
| mean anything ranging from
|
| -a useless machine that produces a signal indistinguishable from
| noise TO -a highly sophisticated marvel of science and
| engineering that performs otherwise impossible calculations
|
| Many _industrial_ quantum computers today fall closer to the the
| former category than the latter. A single person or small team
| with minimal funding has basically no hope of building anything
| meaningful.
|
| I don't know of any other device that has such a broad range of
| quality represented under one name. Maybe like calling ELIZA and
| Opus 4.6 both "AI".
| cwillu wrote:
| All "industrial" quantum computers currently fall entirely in
| the former category. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is
| selling snake oil.
| ion_trapper wrote:
| Is there a QC out there that can perform a commercially
| useful computation? No, not yet. And yes snake oil is abound.
| But the reality is not two categories, it's a spectrum. Some
| are more useless than others.
| cwillu wrote:
| No, it's not a spectrum in any meaningful sense. There are
| scam companies (some with semi-respectable research
| departments attached to them) and there are research
| projects. Anyone selling devices with the promise that
| those devices will do anything useful for their customers
| are simply lying.
|
| It's like fusion energy: there are legitimate companies
| working on the problem, and they may even succeed at some
| point, but anyone willing to deliver a 1MW fusion plant
| tomorrow is scamming you, because the technology doesn't
| work yet.
| ottah wrote:
| I have far more faith that fusion someday might be useful
| than I do for quantum computing.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| The first QC that decrypts previously undecipherable text
| will have incalculable value to the government that
| surrounds it. QC companies are bullshit because they will
| take whatever free non-gov money they can, why not? They
| exist to absorb government money, rightly so, but their
| public profile is simply to get money from private sector
| sources
| observationist wrote:
| This, for sure - if there were any risk of quantum computers
| with 64 or 128 functional qubits, expansion would be a matter
| of engineering - the development of real, actual, functional
| quantum computing is on the order of nuclear weapons
| development. The US government would make it secret, take it
| over, and scale it up to 1024 bits for immediate and near
| total cyber dominance; something like pre-emptive strikes on
| bank accounts, total pwning of adversaries' secure systems,
| planting command and control malware everywhere, grabbing
| intelligence from anywhere the administration saw as
| valuable. There are a ton of dead drop encryptions. They
| could move btc from Satoshis wallets and wreck crypto value.
|
| Quantum computing research you hear about is "neat lab
| experiment" fluff, or a demonstration of corporate technical
| acumen and research capabilities. You won't hear about real
| quantum computing until well after it's been used in
| geopolitical conflicts.
| g42gregory wrote:
| Do we have an example of a real quantum computer doing some kind
| of a computation that is not easily accessible by the regular
| computer?
|
| I keep hearing about "the promise" and "achieving quantum
| supremacy" (again!), but is there a real example of a quantum
| machine doing something useful in real life?
| ion_trapper wrote:
| The Venn diagram of "useful" and "not possible on a classical
| computer" has demonstrations on both disjoint ends but is
| currently empty in the intersection. For now. I fully
| sympathize with the hype-fatigue though.
| moi2388 wrote:
| What about Schor's algorithm?
| scheme271 wrote:
| That's on the useful end but I don't think any QC has gone
| beyond being able to factor 14 or something in that
| neighborhood. Realistically we'd need a few thousand qubits
| to factor anything that's reasonable and current QCs have a
| dozen or so qubits that work.
| vrighter wrote:
| no QC has gone beyond being able to factor 1.
|
| The "factorization" done with quantum computers involved
| cherry picking special numbers so that a special
| "compiled" circuit (knowledge of the answer is required
| in order to do this) can be used instead of the full
| thing. That makes the semantics of the executed program
| "slightly" different.
|
| What the claims say: factor(a,b)
|
| What the implementation does: println("3").
| mapt wrote:
| On the one hand you have strong and persistent claims about
| quantum factoring of large numbers
|
| On the other hand you have
|
| https://algassert.com/post/2500
| moi2388 wrote:
| Thank you for that. I had no idea, very interesting read!
| cwillu wrote:
| No, there are none; the closest we currently have are various
| special purpose and more or less hard-coded machines that
| demonstrate that scaling exists; various general-purpose
| machines operating on handfuls of qubits demonstrating the
| various gates; and various snake oil scams that may or may not
| have semi-respectable research divisions associated with them.
| jgilias wrote:
| Interesting, do you work in that field?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| No. It's as if there's a "No computing with this shit" theorem,
| enforced by nature alongside "No FTL communications," "No
| hidden variables," "No, you can't build a transporter, not
| yours," and "No cloning."
| ottah wrote:
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26735582-700-how-a-we...
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| > Do we have an example of a real quantum computer doing some
| kind of a computation that is not easily accessible by the
| regular computer?
|
| Simulations of condensed matter simulations performed on QCs
| (google's OTOCs, quantinuum's HUbbard model) are not easily
| accessible by the regular computer. There are people working
| hard on simulating these results classically so it's quite
| likely they'll be simulated eventually. We're at point where
| classical computers are still in the race thanks to immense
| scale and algorithmic progress, but I think it won't be the
| case soon.
|
| > something useful in real life?
|
| usefulness is subjective. There are results that are
| potentially interesting to some people on Earth (as opposed to
| RCS).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| If you want to try quantum vibecoding, I threw up a site at
| https://www.haiqu.org where you can mcp with the quantum computer
| at TU Delft. Free, after you make an account.
| infinitewalk wrote:
| For those interested in the compiler/software stack and control
| hardware: https://pennylane.ai/blog/2025/12/open-source-quantum-
| comput...
| lkm0 wrote:
| Incredibly cool initiative! Looks like they're going for a
| trapped-ion device, which the best you can get for now. It's not
| clear what kind of geometry the ions will be on, but I assume
| linear traps? If so, it can't be scaled beyond 10ish qubits, so
| that's definitely more of an educational project. That makes
| sense though, since the other options like racetrack or whatever
| are still active research.
|
| I wonder if there's ever been any cross-pollinating between SC
| and trapped-ion labs when it comes to control electronics and
| such. This could be a good way to find out.
| kitd wrote:
| _> But unlike commercial ventures, the plan is to give away all
| the intellectual property_
|
| I would prefer the term "share". "Give away" implies a single,
| proprietary enterprise could acquire and control it, which isn't
| "open source".
| ModernMech wrote:
| Only if you look at the license. Before that, it's in a
| superposition state of being closed and open sourced.
| teunispeters wrote:
| Better to link the hosting site - https://openquantumdesign.org/
| - or maybe its githubs - https://github.com/OpenQuantumDesign
| too.
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