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IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

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Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#21

Post by krastanov »

mchusma wrote: post #18
krastanov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a researcher from another field that just wants to contract out the computation of a numerical solution to some chemistry problem infeasible on a classical supercomputer, a million "physical" qubits is a fairly reasonable guestimate. If you are a quantum computation person developing near term applications, you probably would already start getting excited with a 100 (sufficiently long-lived) qubits. The "s…

Is it accurate to say the primary use of this is likely to design further quantum computers?

In a way, yes. I usually call such devices "technology demonstrators". But I am certain there would be researchers offended by such a trivialization of their work.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#22

Post by haneefmubarak »

mchusma wrote: post #18
krastanov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a researcher from another field that just wants to contract out the computation of a numerical solution to some chemistry problem infeasible on a classical supercomputer, a million "physical" qubits is a fairly reasonable guestimate. If you are a quantum computation person developing near term applications, you probably would already start getting excited with a 100 (sufficiently long-lived) qubits. The "s…

Is it accurate to say the primary use of this is likely to design further quantum computers?

Yeah the R&D that goes into this is mainly part of the longer term effort to make increasingly large quantum computers.

In case you meant it the other way: the number of qubits here is still far too small for any real world application, including for simulations that would help design larger chips.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#25

Post by krastanov »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #23

Where does this sit on the "applicably breaking secure classical cryptography" spectrum?

Many years away. A good guestimate is that you need 1M physical qubits factor numbers fast.

Also, there is classical public-key cryptography (i.e. encryption algorithms that run efficiently on today's classical computers) that is not susceptible to quantum computers. And symmetric cryptography has never been susceptible to quantum computers.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#26

Post by dekhn »

krastanov wrote: post #19
filereaper wrote: post #16

>'Eagle' is IBM's first quantum processor developed and deployed to contain more than 100 operational and connected qubits. It follows IBM's 65-qubit 'Hummingbird' processor unveiled in 2020 and the 27-qubit 'Falcon' processor unveiled in 2019. I guess I missed last years announcement of the 65 qubit one. So okay we have a 127 qubit machine, what did they do with it afterwards? The Q3 financials were released so this…

In the months after such an announcement you can expect articles with various attempts at an application to pop up on arxiv. I am saying "attempts at an application", not because the papers are not impressive, rather because the devices are still too small and noisy to excite anyone but researchers in the field. As a researcher in the field I am certainly very excited, because the figure of merit I care about have be…

As much as I would love to see quantum computers contributing to quantum chemistry, it's unclear that having more computation would magically solve any actual practical real world applied problem in chemistry.

I assume you're saying classically infeasible to refer to the O(n*7) scaling of some QM basis functions?

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#27

Post by cgearhart »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #23

Where does this sit on the "applicably breaking secure classical cryptography" spectrum?

It’s completely irrelevant to that problem. Breaking crypto requires quantum error correction, which we think requires thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of physical qubits per logical qubit. And the operations of the computation require many more logical qubits than just representing the target value.

It’s still gonna be awhile. But this is still pretty interesting because a lot of the detractors of quantum computing thought there was strong evidence that we’d never even manage to get this far. So it seems _slightly_ more likely that large scale abstract quantum computation is feasible.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#28

Post by maaaaattttt »

krastanov wrote: post #19
filereaper wrote: post #16

>'Eagle' is IBM's first quantum processor developed and deployed to contain more than 100 operational and connected qubits. It follows IBM's 65-qubit 'Hummingbird' processor unveiled in 2020 and the 27-qubit 'Falcon' processor unveiled in 2019. I guess I missed last years announcement of the 65 qubit one. So okay we have a 127 qubit machine, what did they do with it afterwards? The Q3 financials were released so this…

In the months after such an announcement you can expect articles with various attempts at an application to pop up on arxiv. I am saying "attempts at an application", not because the papers are not impressive, rather because the devices are still too small and noisy to excite anyone but researchers in the field. As a researcher in the field I am certainly very excited, because the figure of merit I care about have be…

Would you have examples of such simulations at hand? Or links describing some of them? I know next to nothing about quantum computing but I’ve always loved a good infeasible problem.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#29

Post by dekhn »

baby wrote: post #11

I'm starting to get some fatigue about quantum computer news, and I just dismiss them now. If there really is a valuable breakthrough, everyone will be talking about it for months non-stop so I won't miss it.

This is exactly correct. The moment something important happens in quantum computing the community will recognize it as such. In the meantime most of us are just waiting for somebody to do something interesting that couldn't really have been solved (possibly approximately) on classical systems.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#30

Post by krastanov »

dekhn wrote: post #26
krastanov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the months after such an announcement you can expect articles with various attempts at an application to pop up on arxiv. I am saying "attempts at an application", not because the papers are not impressive, rather because the devices are still too small and noisy to excite anyone but researchers in the field. As a researcher in the field I am certainly very excited, because the figure of merit I care about have be…

As much as I would love to see quantum computers contributing to quantum chemistry, it's unclear that having more computation would magically solve any actual practical real world applied problem in chemistry. I assume you're saying classically infeasible to refer to the O(n*7) scaling of some QM basis functions?

Your assumption is correct, and your cautiousness is warranted. I do expect the polynomial complexity to become better with future improvements in algorithms. Either way, it is on us fanboys to make devices that fulfill these claims.
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