Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

princeton.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#11

Post by uncoder0 »

propter_hoc wrote: post #9

I did graduate research in an area of experimental physics that was quite close to state of the art quantum computing research. It was very exciting, but all the research was pretty much in extreme conditions that aren't really usable for a realistic computing device (ultra-high vacuum, nanokelvin temperatures, high magnetic fields or laser trap confinement, etc.). From the looks of it this paper is in the same vein.…

The vacuum, temperature and confinement requirements would seem to be huge problems relative to the exotic material requirement of current gates (Not to diminish the significance of accomplishing this in silicon). As far as I know these 'hard' problems have remained pretty constant in quantum computing. Are we making progress on any of them? Basically, in your opinion how are things progressing in the field with respect to the big problems with making quantum computing mainframe ubiquitous?

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#12

Post by empath75 »

tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

https://www.nature.com/articles/npjqi201523

Here are a bunch of potential applications.

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#13

Post by NhanH »

tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

Quantum annealing can be used for optimization of functions. Shor’s algorithm of integer factorization would solve (and cause) a whole host of problems for us.

But in general, quantum computer is not strictly a superset of improvement over Turing machine. It’s just different. And while it might reduces your database query time, unless you are already working at that abstraction it might probably be invisible changes for you.

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#14

Post by Nelgraf »

tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

Someone linked this video the other day: https://vimeo.com/180284417

I really enjoyed it for layman's perspective while still exposing technical depth. I hadn't thought about how one of the big challenges of quantum computing is figuring out how to morph your traditional parallel algorithm into a quantum algorithm (with all the weirdness that entails)

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#15

Post by TrinaryWorksToo »

NhanH wrote: post #13
tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

Quantum annealing can be used for optimization of functions. Shor’s algorithm of integer factorization would solve (and cause) a whole host of problems for us. But in general, quantum computer is not strictly a superset of improvement over Turing machine. It’s just different. And while it might reduces your database query time, unless you are already working at that abstraction it might probably be invisible changes…

From what I gathered, it's similar to how a CPU and GPU compare: different complexity classes, different problems it's efficient on.

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#16

Post by bsder »

NhanH wrote: post #13
tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

Quantum annealing can be used for optimization of functions. Shor’s algorithm of integer factorization would solve (and cause) a whole host of problems for us. But in general, quantum computer is not strictly a superset of improvement over Turing machine. It’s just different. And while it might reduces your database query time, unless you are already working at that abstraction it might probably be invisible changes…

> Shor’s algorithm of integer factorization would solve (and cause) a whole host of problems for us.

I thought it was still an open question as to whether a quantum computer would actually be able to solve this class of problems or not.

In addition, quantum computers have a great deal of noise--so quantum error correction seems to be a thing.

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#17

Post by himom »

tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

There is no added Turing power to QC over CC. Turing complete is Turing complete. Think of QC as a coprocessor for certain classes of algorithms like prime factorization.

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#18

Post by yorwba »

bsder wrote: post #16
NhanH wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum annealing can be used for optimization of functions. Shor’s algorithm of integer factorization would solve (and cause) a whole host of problems for us. But in general, quantum computer is not strictly a superset of improvement over Turing machine. It’s just different. And while it might reduces your database query time, unless you are already working at that abstraction it might probably be invisible changes…

> Shor’s algorithm of integer factorization would solve (and cause) a whole host of problems for us. I thought it was still an open question as to whether a quantum computer would actually be able to solve this class of problems or not. In addition, quantum computers have a great deal of noise--so quantum error correction seems to be a thing.

Quantum computing is certainly able to solve integer factorization and related problems (like breaking RSA encryption), just not for practical problem sizes yet.

You are probably thinking about NP-hard problems, which may or may not be solvable faster than on classical computers.

Re: New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers

#19

Post by sytelus »

tim-- wrote: post #10

My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?". The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

Here's my rather crude understanding of what QC can do (please feel free to comment if this is correct): Let's say you have a problem that requires examining 2^N different possibilities. So the brute force solution would have O(2^N) runtime. QC can potentially help to solve this problem in O(2^(sqrt(N))) time instead. This can make a world of difference. For example, if N=1024 and examining each possibility took 1 nanosecond, it would still exceed the time far far more than age of universe. With QC with 1024 qubits, it would take 1 microsecond to solve it.
Post reply on HN