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IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

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Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#201

Post by RivieraKid »

Hamuko wrote: post #150
kingcharles wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D TVs will come of age once autostereoscopic displays reach the right level of quality. After being blown away by my first glimpse of a display in around 1998 I fully expected them to be useable years ago. I guess we might still be another "10 years" away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy

I really doubt that there's going to be huge desire for 3D TVs at any point. People can already look at video on a 2D display and interpret 3D visuals from it. And if you want to be fully immersed in something, maybe you want VR instead.

Google Starline seemed amazing to me. I would love to have a large immersive 3D display for videotelephony, sports, nature documentaries, etc.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#202

Post by eof »

cpuguy83 wrote: post #191
dekhn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that sense, this is a pretty big step because for the first time there is a quantum computer that cannot be simulated by a classical one. It's also expected they will have a processor with over 400qubits next year and over 1000 in 2 years. This are huge leaps. Still they aren't currently doing anything useful and need to prove themselves.

I am surprised to see that growth given my intuition that each additional qubit would be harder than the previous to add to the system.

Are there any moores law type predictions/historical trackers for qubits?

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#203

Post by [deleted] »

tester756 wrote: post #192
jazzyjackson wrote: post #33

Quantum Computers sitting in their cryogenic chambers are such works of art, stacks of giant brass plates and hundreds of heat pipes (or coolant pipes? liquid helium I suppose) twisted and coiling throughout the structure hanging like some steampunk chandelier (why do they hang from above anyway?) EDIT: changed to a few direct links to pics: [0][1][2] The esoteric design reminds me of the Connection Machine blog post…

is this most advanced tech at this very moment?

[deleted]

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#205

Post by throwaway2568 »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #174
jazzyjackson wrote: post #33

Quantum Computers sitting in their cryogenic chambers are such works of art, stacks of giant brass plates and hundreds of heat pipes (or coolant pipes? liquid helium I suppose) twisted and coiling throughout the structure hanging like some steampunk chandelier (why do they hang from above anyway?) EDIT: changed to a few direct links to pics: [0][1][2] The esoteric design reminds me of the Connection Machine blog post…

Whoa, that is so cool! I thought the Eischer esque machine in Devs was mostly Hollywood fluff but it absolutely looked almost just like that.

The Devs producer met with the Google team in Santa Barbara (which works on very similar superconducting qubits), so it should look very close!

That said the whole hovering in free space thing was perhaps a bit over the top in the show.

https://qz.com/1826093/devs-creator-alex-garland-describes-t...

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#206

Post by mathgenius »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #41

Reminds me of computing history with vacuum tube computers the size of a room. Even if the actual hardware isn't practical today, the lessons learned will still apply in the future.

Yeah I agree. There's so many details to work out about controlling these things that this is still significant progress. It's like we need an Elon Musk of quantum to tell us what's going on. We are making these just to blow them up, they aren't going to the moon.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#207

Post by dumbfounder »

krastanov wrote: post #176
dumbfounder wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it costs a few dollars to make the latter and tens of millions to make the former then it’s fair to not be super impressed.

You are off by 9 orders of magnitude at least. The classical super computer in these comparisons costs 0.3 Billion dollars and this does not count the many Trillions that took to develop the tech. Even on this measure, the (useless for now) quantum tech wins.

I was assuming it was transistor count to qubit count, didn’t count the 0’s but either way not 9 orders of magnitude off so not sure what exactly you are saying, but either way all I am saying is that it isn’t impressive to a lot of people precisely because it is useless right now. So you are off by 100% in my opinion, way more than 9 orders of magnitude ;)

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#208

Post by vilhelm_s »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #33

Quantum Computers sitting in their cryogenic chambers are such works of art, stacks of giant brass plates and hundreds of heat pipes (or coolant pipes? liquid helium I suppose) twisted and coiling throughout the structure hanging like some steampunk chandelier (why do they hang from above anyway?) EDIT: changed to a few direct links to pics: [0][1][2] The esoteric design reminds me of the Connection Machine blog post…

One of the IBM scientists seems to have an old quantum computer as a piece of office decoration, so I guess there's some hope to preserve them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWJCfOvochA

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#209

Post by RivieraKid »

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #175
RivieraKid wrote: post #86

Tangential question, what are the areas of technology where we can expect to see substantial progress or breakthroughs within 2030, i.e. what are the most exciting areas to follow and look forward to? Here's my list: - Nuclear fusion (Helion, ZAP, TAE, Tokamak Energy, CFS, Wendelstein). - Self-driving cars. - New types of nuclear fission reactors. - Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship). - Supersonic airplanes (Boom). - Soli…

I would argue that most of the items on this list can be subdivided into two types of hype. short term hype (real advances that will happen in 1-2 years, but won't matter by 2030, because they are just a generational iteration) Over-hyped far-future research. (things where the possibilities have yet to be brought down to earth by the practical limits of implementing them broadly / cost effectively) When these things…

Interesting, I think all of those items have a good chance of actually happening ("longevity research" happening means some sort of meaningful progress).

I hope there will be some unexpected breakthroughs too.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#210

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

mixedCase wrote: post #199
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any pictures of the hand-wired LISP Machine online? I searched, but couldn't find it. Also - when LISP was invented (1958) - what was the state of computers at the time? Doing some research - it seems like direct keyboard input to computers was only available for 2 years prior. It seems like languages were decades ahead of hardware. I guess I'm having trouble fathoming how languages were so far ahead while…

> I guess I'm having trouble fathoming how languages were so far ahead while computers were seemingly VERY primitive. I have a much bigger emotional conflict when contrasting that with the current state of mainstream programming languages, that are only just beginning to tread onto territories like algebraic data types and pattern matching that ML paved almost 50 years ago. Is there any hope for true dependent typing…

Don't Prolog and Erlang have pattern matching built in??
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