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Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

research.ibm.com

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Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#41

Post by aeleos »

mempko wrote: post #25
avaer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the transistor replaced the vacuum tube, which everyone was already using. When the transistor was invented everyone rushed to use it because it was clear what it was good for.

No, first customer of the transistor was the government because they were the only ones who could afford it.

Yes, and the reason the government rushed to it is because they wanted the absolute best technology (that was orders of magnitude better than anything else) and would pay for it to have a leg up over their enemies. If they were cheap right when they came out, everyone would have bought them.

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#42

Post by ouid »

cwyers wrote: post #38
sbue wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some pretty cool problems in quantum systems like chemistry that even a classical supercomputer would not be able to solve This could have a very positive impact on fields like medicine

I am not saying what quantum computing is or isn't doing. Contrasting quantum computing and AI is like comparing... digging a hole and shovels. "While digging a hole is useful, these shovels are even better than hole-digging!" It's nonsense sauce. If quantum computing can be useful at AI tasks, then quantum computing won't replace AI, we'll be doing AI on quantum computers. This is just marketing mumbo jumbo to convi…

It's a little funny that you're defending the integrity of calling the status quo "AI", don't you think?

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#43

Post by jacquesm »

kowdermeister wrote: post #33
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how I read your comment. It clearly tries to suggest that when the transistor was first invented people did not know what to do with it. I think the MASER/LASER would have been a far better example.

I read that somewhere (can't recall the source) that it was a nice gadget, but it wasn't an overnight sensation. You are right, MASER/LASER is a better analogy.

I don't know where you read that but that is not the story that I'm familiar with.

Applications for the transistor were known before the device even existed.

The problems were first to make them reliably, then to make them in quantity and finally to make them cheap enough. All those were overcome and the revolution that followed has not stopped even today.

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#44

Post by cwyers »

ouid wrote: post #42
cwyers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying what quantum computing is or isn't doing. Contrasting quantum computing and AI is like comparing... digging a hole and shovels. "While digging a hole is useful, these shovels are even better than hole-digging!" It's nonsense sauce. If quantum computing can be useful at AI tasks, then quantum computing won't replace AI, we'll be doing AI on quantum computers. This is just marketing mumbo jumbo to convi…

It's a little funny that you're defending the integrity of calling the status quo "AI", don't you think?

Yes, yes, real AI died in the AI Winter because the settlers didn't have enough parenthesis to last until spring, it was all very tragic, and now we're all just stirring the pile of linear algebra until the results look good. [1] But that doesn't make IBM's marketing copy any better. And IBM loves making grandiose claims that don't work out in practice. [2]

[1] https://xkcd.com/1838/ [2] https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2017/02/md-anderson-cancer-...

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#45

Post by AlexCoventry »

jacquesm wrote: post #31
AlexCoventry wrote: post #18

It seems that IBM is really struggling to stay connected to reality, let alone run a profitable business.

Are you suggesting IBM is not profitable?

They seem to be running on inertia at this point. I haven't seen any plausible new enterprises from them. It's possible I'm looking in the wrong places, though.

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#47

Post by AlexCoventry »

finid wrote: post #37
ekianjo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recall that the iPhone/iPad were preceded by attempts at tablet computing that were very crude in comparison. That's a very poor analogy. Here we are talking about stuff that is not even functional, technology wise.

Poor poor analogy, but at least you get the picture. They are talking 15- and 17-qubit-capable processors today, but are looking at 50-qubit ones in a few years.

The key question is whether QC algorithms are scaling as predicted by QC theory, or at least better than classical algorithms for the same task. If the error correction is causing them to scale poorly, the design is probably infeasible for large-qubit calculations.

I expect it is scaling poorly, or IBM would have reported otherwise when moving from 5- to 16-qubit machines.

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#48

Post by cohomologo »

The point where it gets interesting for realistic physics and chemistry applications is around 100 (error-corrected) logical qubits and 10^8 coherent operations, see for example https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03859.

The error correction adds another factor of at least 100 or so in both qubits and gates needed (but possibly much bigger than 100, depending on qubit quality), see for example https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2316.

Other fields of application - factoring large integers, for example - takes many many more qubits to be interesting.

While it's good to get people excited about the potential of quantum computing, it's seems a bit disingenious to suggest that a 17-bit quantum processor is commercially interesting. I especially like how they juxtapose it with the publically available 16-bit quantum processor to make it seem like one extra qubit makes it worth paying money...

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#49

Post by cohomologo »

moomin wrote: post #9
cirgue wrote: post #5

I 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.

Not any given quantum computer -- Scott Aaronson debunks the D-Wave "quantum" annealers that aren't actually shown to be harnessing the quantum power.

IBM's machine by contrast is a genuine quantum computer -- the kind Scott Aaronson would probably have no problem with. But the number of qubits is too tiny to do anything interesting.

Re: Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers

#50

Post by cohomologo »

cubano wrote: post #28
greeneggs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I was listening to a podcast yesterday where Google is basically "guaranteeing a breakthrough" in QC by the end of the year. Something about the 49-qubit threshold or some such proclamation, so maybe that's something that will finally move the needle.

The Google group in Santa Barbara is building to a 49-qubit computer. If I understand correctly, it'll be interesting for understanding how you calibrate your quantum machine and validate that it is doing what it is supposed to. The algorithms they run on classical computers to validate that device will need a decent amount of supercomputer time. And much bigger devices would be impossible to validate with a classical computer in the same way, so in some sense you hit "the limit" of classical computation and start to move beyond.

But for the computational problems that are useful for applications, which are not very much like the problem they use for validation, 49 qubits is still far far away from beating a classical computer.

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