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I'm an experienced software engineer (+15 years dev experience, MsC in Computer Science) and quantum computing is the first thing in my experience that is being hard to grasp/understand. I'd love to fix that ;)
What resources would you recommend to start learning about quantum computing?
Ideally resources that touch both the theoretical base and evolve to more practical usages.
- Nielsen and Chuang, Quantum computation and information: mmrc.amss.cas.cn/tlb/201702/W020170224608149940643.pdf
While you are reading and solving the above book, I strongly recommend reading:
- "Quantum computing since Democritus" by Scott Aaronson, one of the researchers on quantum computation: https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/
This book will give you a "flavour" of where the power of quantum computation might be coming from, and the whole host of theoretical issues that surround this domain.
What I _highly_ recommend is practicing problem-solving using these resources:
(1) Microsoft quantum katas: https://github.com/microsoft/QuantumKatas
(2) Codeforces Q# coding contest: https://codeforces.com/msqs2018
Actually programming the circuits in Q# will give you a sense of stuff that's swept under the rug when reading textbooks: initialization of qubit states, a good sense of what "qubits cannot be copied" means, etc.
At this point, one ought to have an understand of quantum computation and our current understanding of its power (in particular, the relationship that we don't know how to separate BPP and BQP), how to implement the "common" quantum algorithms in a programming language, and a vivid sense of the "quantumness" of these algorithms.
For reference, I speak from experience: (1) My solutions to the quantum katas: https://github.com/bollu/quantum-course-exercises. (2) My scattered QC notes: https://github.com/bollu/notes/blob/master/quantum-computati...
(One can find a full pdf of quantum computing since Democritus relatively easily on the internet if one so chooses.)
https://metacpan.org/pod/Quantum::Superpositions
(The original author, Damian Conway, is a university CS professor.)
[0] https://qiskit.org/learn/ [1] https://unitary.fund/posts/high_school_resources.html [2] https://quantum.country/ [3] http://qworld.lu.lv/
I truly believe anyone is capable of grasping QC. Minimal physics required. Math no higher than linear algebra. Q# Quantum Katas are ideal for beginners. Mariia Mykhailova is a terrific instructor. And you can scale up to arbitrary numbers of (simulated) Qubits on Azure Quantum when you are ready to solve real world optimizations / simulations ;)
Just want to link up another resource currently ongoing: Qiskit Global Summer School. Currently 2000+ students enrolled and materials are identical to bootcamp given to IBM Quantum Interns
https://qiskit.org/events/summer-school/
Best of Luck ;)
What types of problems are quantum computers anticipated to solve? I've only heard about how they are able to break certain cryptographical algorithms that were designed long before quantum was even a thought.
As a side track, how far away are we from "quantum cloud services" that I can pass arguments to and receive output from in exchange for a monthly or per-resource-used fee? What types of problems are quantum computers anticipated to solve? I've only heard about how they are able to break certain cryptographical algorithms that were designed long before quantum was even a thought.
As a side track, how far away are we from "quantum cloud services" that I can pass arguments to and receive output from in exchange for a monthly or per-resource-used fee? What types of problems are quantum computers anticipated to solve? I've only heard about how they are able to break certain cryptographical algorithms that were designed long before quantum was even a thought.
AWS Braket is in preview, so should provide what you are asking for in the near future. QC hardware manufacturers generally also offer their own cloud access mechanisms.
I'm sure that once the electrical engineering side of things is in place and commercial machines are being manufactured (custom or model based design), it will become a new consulting domain for software engineers to work in.
As a side track, how far away are we from "quantum cloud services" that I can pass arguments to and receive output from in exchange for a monthly or per-resource-used fee? What types of problems are quantum computers anticipated to solve? I've only heard about how they are able to break certain cryptographical algorithms that were designed long before quantum was even a thought.
In reality, they can't do this until they have a working quantum computer of an interesting size.
For now, it's limited to toy-size QCs, which can be simulated faster and cheaper using an ordinary computer. So if they are on a cloud server, it's more for curiosity value only. They aren't actually useful.
There's a lot of buzz and hope and money going into it, but nobody knows with certainty if it's even possible to build one of a useful size.
The "quantum supremacy" claim which happened already was genuine and deserves accolades, but it turns out only to be useful on a very contrived kind of problem. The clever part, in a way, was figuring out a suitably contrived problem, to show that quantum supremacy is technically possible without resulting in a useful quantum computer, and it doesn't run any of the standard quantum circuits.