Amazing this has not been renamed to Watson.
Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#12That's been available for months. Has anyone used it?
A five-qubit processor has been available for a bit over a year now [1]. Last week, they've announced that they'll make freely available a 16-qubit processor, but for now it is invite-only. They've also announced that they'll sell access to a 17-qubit device.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/how-ibms-new-five-qu...
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#13I know next to nothing about quantum computing, but something about this seems extremely fishy. Had they developed a working quantum processor, would they not have publicized its capabilities far and wide before releasing an enterprise API? Failing at that, would there not be a benchmarks page that demonstrates the capabilities of this system? Could someone better acquainted with this technology weigh in?
Indeed, someone spends what AFAICT is a very small amount of his time debunking every last claim that any given quantum computer does anything straightforward simulated annealing can't do.
Scott Aaronson?
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#14What interesting computation can you do on a 16 qubit processor?
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#15I tried testing the Bernstein Vazarani algorithm on a 5 qubit quantum computer that IBM let us use for an afternoon for one of my university classes last semester. It was unable to recover the hidden string, even though simulating the circuit classically recovered it. Anyone can launch a "quantum computer as a service" platform, but the service won't be valuable if the computer doesn't work. And so far no quantum com…
> but the service won't be valuable if the computer doesn't work.
So the state-of-the-art in quantum computing is still basically "can tell you the 200th prime number, sometimes"?
Not very useful.
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#16What interesting computation can you do on a 16 qubit processor?
you could factor an 8 bit number really fast heh
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#17Amazing this has not been renamed to Watson.
wow, thats right.
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#18It seems that IBM is really struggling to stay connected to reality, let alone run a profitable business.
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#19I know next to nothing about quantum computing, but something about this seems extremely fishy. Had they developed a working quantum processor, would they not have publicized its capabilities far and wide before releasing an enterprise API? Failing at that, would there not be a benchmarks page that demonstrates the capabilities of this system? Could someone better acquainted with this technology weigh in?
It's mostly marketing at this point.
Even if their quantum computers work, at the scale they operate today everything they do will also be doable by simulating a quantum computer on an average PC with some slowdown. It's just "now we can do it on a real quantum computer".
They would have to rapidly increase the bit number to produce anything that's useful. That may very well happen in the future, but nobody knows for sure.
Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers
#20I tried testing the Bernstein Vazarani algorithm on a 5 qubit quantum computer that IBM let us use for an afternoon for one of my university classes last semester. It was unable to recover the hidden string, even though simulating the circuit classically recovered it. Anyone can launch a "quantum computer as a service" platform, but the service won't be valuable if the computer doesn't work. And so far no quantum com…
> but the service won't be valuable if the computer doesn't work. So the state-of-the-art in quantum computing is still basically "can tell you the 200th prime number, sometimes"? Not very useful.
Even if this is the case, at first people were scratching their head looking at the transistor what it might be good for.