IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#281

Post by dane-pgp » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #276

dane-pgp wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have chosen death. There are reasons to worry about the ethics of longevity research (especially if the benefits of it are not justly shared), but I don't think you can justify withholding life-improving medical treatment from people just because you want to help science by letting people die early. That sort of thinking is how we get Logan's Run.

It's dishonest to characterize what I'm saying as "choosing death", as if I've got a nihilistic urge to nuke the planet. Death, birth, and renewal is part of the entire biosphere which has been existed for billions of years. The cells that defy death are called "cancer". The messiness with which humans come into being and then pass away again is NOT something to be engineered away - it is something to experience and…

I apologise for the "choosing death" meme, but I think it is only as inappropriate as you equating human beings with "cancer". You're right, though, that humans have to learn to experience and in some sense come to terms with the messiness of death.

I think what we disagree on is what it means to "engineer away" death. Are we engineering away death if we cure a disease, but don't extend the maximum lifespan of humans? Is extending the average lifespan to 100 years all right as long as those treatments are designed to not work on people over 100 years old? If a treatment is later found that helps 100 year olds to extend their age to 101, is that the treatment that should be banned, or is there some number N where adding N years to the previous maximum is morally wrong and the whole world has to agree on banning it?

Your point about the Pharaohs is maybe not as strong as you think, since of course the Pharaonic system did outlast any of the individual office holders. I don't think it was old age that lead to the fall of that regime, and there are plenty of regimes which manage to be equally horrible within a single lifetime, or that are overthrown within the space of one lifetime.

Thank you for that succinct explanation of the premise of Logan's Run. I wasn't sure if it worked as an analogy, since, as you say, the motivation of the society was different from the one you are advocating for, but I think the most relevant aspect of Logan's Run is the dystopian nature of a society which imposes age limits on its members, against their wishes.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#282

Post by m0zg » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 8:17 AM UTC

samus wrote: post #274

m0zg wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of these are on their way into "valley of disillusionment" before they become generally useful, though perhaps not as grandiose as originally promised. And longevity research is not even a real need - we already live too long as it is, from the evolutionary and economic standpoint. I'd much rather someone came up with a way to cheaply and painlessly end one's life once quality of life begins to deteriorate due t…

The How is not the issue. A combination of various drugs or an opiate overdose should do the trick. It's already legal in Switzerland, Canada, and Belgium. Voluntary euthanasia is ultimately challenging because of similar legal issues as with the death penalty - it cannot be undone, and there are forces in society that can lead individuals to use it for other reasons than just being over and done with suffering throu…

That's the point. As long as I'm lucid I should have full bodily autonomy, including the decision to shuffle off this mortal coil. In fact I already have control over this decision.

> and there are forces in society

So? You're going to tell me I can't go anytime I want to? That's not the case even now. It's just that now I'd have to procure the nitrogen myself (which isn't difficult), and my relatives would have to deal with the body. I'm merely suggesting a service that resolves this purely logistical complication, and excludes the possibility of not quite dying but living the rest of one's life as a vegetable.

Think of what we have now: people spend years, sometimes decades suffering from chronic diseases, or just plain not having anything or anyone to live for. And it'll get worse as medicine "improves", and lifespans "improve" with it. Is it humane to withhold the option to end it all from them? I don't think it is. I will grant you that there are likely tens of millions of such people on the planet right now. I will also grant that this is not an uncontroversial thing to suggest. But the alternative we have now doesn't seem any more humane or dignified to me.

If this still doesn't sit right with people, we could age and condition-restrict it, or require a long waiting period for when this is not related to acute incurable disease.

> as with the death penalty

Which is also inhumane, IMO. It's much worse to spend the rest of one's days in confinement instead of 30 seconds until barbiturates kick in. That's what the sadists who are against the death penalty are counting on.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#283

Post by krastanov » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

tubby12345 wrote: post #258

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…

>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. ... >"logical qubit" or less formally "long-lived qubit" ... With 100 logical qubits (i.e. 100k physical qubits) lol you're literally guilty of playing the same trick that people are…

Read the second comment you are quoting to the end. I think you misread something.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#284

Post by krastanov » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

dumbfounder wrote: post #207

krastanov wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

The people that have created these devices never claimed that they can be used for any useful computation, neither did the people you are talking to here. However, these technology demonstrators do show a programmable computation (sampling from a particular probability distribution) that is infeasible on anything but a supercomputer and becomes just impossible once you add a couple more qubits.

Sure, we do believe these devices, when made more reliable, will also do "useful" computations that are infeasible on supercomputers, but we are aware that we need to build the devices first in order to convince you.

9 orders is the difference between a few dollars and a billion dollars.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#285

Post by xondono » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

samus wrote: post #277

xondono wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but trying to build things too early makes them meaningless. Babbage designed a computer that had essentially no impact, because it could not be built, and by the time the tech was around we had better ways to build computers. As a global effort, it may be wiser to shift focus to other things more achievable, and try QC again in 2100 (IDK, just some random future time).

Babbage's technology was feasible in principle. The differential engine was successfully built as a museum project, though it was complicated by Babbage not leaving behind detailed plans[0]. It can be argued that gear-based computational engines face inherent technical challenges that electrical designs don't. But simpler, far more successful versions of mechanical calculators have been developed as well[1]. There is…

> The differential engine was successfully built as a museum project

…with modern CNCs. It was simply not feasible at the time to build the parts required with enough precision, that’s what I meant by “no impact”, no one built on it because by the time we had the tools to build it, the tools where better than the thing itself.

As for the “along the way” argument, for me that’s a non-starter. We could use the same argument to justify investing in scams. “Cold fusion might not be possible, but think of what could we discover on our way there!”

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#286

Post by xondono » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #110

xondono wrote: post #87

I can avoid thinking that as a species, QC is a bad investment. I think we’re trying just too early, like Charles Babbage. Great idea but the world doesn’t have the tech required. I think that if they are honest with themselves, most researchers know they won’t see the day QC are a practical reality, but everyone is trying to become the “father of QC”.

I hear what you are saying, but maybe on the way to the moon, we can invent microwave ovens

Not to be brazen, but if your argument could be used to justify any investment, I’m not sure it’s a good argument.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#287

Post by josefx » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

krastanov wrote: post #63

intvocoder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's claim was widely criticized for being an unimportant and uninteresting benchmark, making the quantum s*premacy claim nonsense. Later research proposes that an exascale-level supercomputer could simulate it in "dozens of seconds". https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03011

This is a funny comparison. "Here is this device with 50 components. It can be simulated by a device with 1000000000000 components, so we should not really be impressed."

We can barely simulate a rough approximation of the brain of a worm. The world is filled with many things more impressive than early examples quantum computing.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#288

Post by GoblinSlayer » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

a9h74j wrote: post #221

zackbloom wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much colder than that, single-digit millikelvin. They use He-3/4 dilution refrigerators [1]. Getting things cold and electromagnetically-quiet enough that the quantum state doesn't collapse is a big challenge in the field. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator

And some people think the brain can be deterministic at 300K.

Why not? Computers are deterministic at higher temperatures.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#289

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

KoftaBob wrote: post #194

ncmncm wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you missed the announcement last week. Whether to believe it is up to you.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3153727/chin... "Lead researcher Pan Jianwei said the Zuchongzhi 2 – a 66-qubit programmable superconducting quantum computer named after a 5th century mathematician" IBMs quantum computer is 127 qubit .

"Mine is bigger!" does not define quantum supremacy. In particular, IBM does not claim to have performed any computations with theirs. By what they do report, that is because it cannot do any, yet.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#290

Post by abrichr » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

zoover2020 wrote: post #46

rwmj wrote: post #13

Interesting that the number of qubits is approximately doubling every year according to the article.

How do we call this 'law'?

Investor Steve Jurvetson calls it Rose's Law, after Geordie Rose, founder of D-Wave Systems:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/50399541811

> We first invested in 2003, and Geordie predicted that he would be able to demonstrate a two-bit quantum computer within 6 months. There was a certain precision to his predictions. With one bit under his belt, and a second coming, he went on to suggest that the number of qubits in a scalable quantum computing architecture should double every year. It sounded a lot like Gordon Moore’s prediction back in 1965, when he extrapolated from just five data points on a log-scale (his original plot is below).

> So I called it “Rose’s Law” and that seemed to amuse him.