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The quantum computing bubble

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Re: The quantum computing bubble

#91

Post by YetAnotherNick »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #68
mdorazio wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to get your information from places other than Wikipedia. The vacuum tube was invented in 1904 and entered mass production by RCA in 1920 after several rounds of improvements. D-Wave started demonstrating its QC product in 2009 and here we are 13 years later with basically nothing. Are you going to tell us that QC will be commercially viable in three years?

It's honestly just a really bad analogy. Evacuated tubes were not pursued en-masse as an end unto themselves the way quantum computing is being pursued. Their development was as a side fascination for a handful of researchers or they were advanced because they were directly applicable to some goal of a researcher with maybe some mild tweaking. They were not a moonshot and they developed along similar lines as most us…

> It's honestly just a really bad analogy. Evacuated tubes were not pursued en-masse as an end unto themselves the way quantum computing is being pursued

No, it's not. The Vacuum tube was sold for commercial and industrial use starting from 1915 for rectification. And most of the research spending went into it after it shown some promise from commercial application.

Not arguing though if pursuing something just for research is bad, just saying vacuum tube research was nothing like quantum computer research.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#92

Post by [deleted] »

marcosdumay wrote: post #73
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people, including the author, would agree QC should be funded for fundamental research reasons. But that is clearly not the way it is being pitched to VC. Right now there is no clear use-case, that's what I felt he was warning against. If nothing materialises soon, he's probably correct to say this is a bubble.

> Right now there is no clear use-case Why people keep repeating that? You mean that if somebody creates a machine that can simulate chemistry and materials science in polynomial time, nobody would use it? That's crazy.

[deleted]

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#93

Post by lamontcg »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #35
dr_dshiv wrote: post #25

I have a fair amount of experience in this space. It’s like, at a vacuum tube era, at best. There is a definite opportunity for advancement, but it is still extremely early. We are building user interfaces that make it easier to “play around” with quantum computing phenomena—especially with music and art—with the idea that our aesthetic sensibilities may help drive discovery.

> It’s like, at a vacuum tube era, at best. How is it even remotely close? Vacuum tubes were a thriving industry, producing many groundbreaking products and services.

Right now it is a pre-transistor in the 1920s and 1930s.

Vacuum tubes are analogous to the computers that we have now. In 1925 a patent for the concept of a FET was filed. It wasn't until 1948 that we had a working transistor.

That took 23 years to go from concept to useful invention. It isn't too surprising that a quantum computer is harder.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#94

Post by quantum42 »

The article must be written someone who is not an expert in this field, or an expert who is suppressing information to disinform with his conclusion.

I say this because:

1. They say nothing about the breakthroughs in quantum error correction that is allowing IBM to promise a leap from 89 qubits today to 4,000 qubits in 2025 (still not enough on its own for a cryptographically relevant quantum computer - CRQC0, running Shor's algorithm for exponential speedup in breaking e.g. RSA 2048, which some research suggests would take 20M qubits including those for quantum error correction)

2. He did not mention Grover's algorithm which provides quadratic speedup (for time complexity of searching for a particular string in an unsorted list of N items) over their classical counterparts. However, even quadratic speedup is considerable when N is large.

3. He did not mention the breakthrough by University of Chicago researchers that showed multiple quantum computers can be entangled over tuned optical fibers to act as a single quantum computer. This still doesn't mean that we can go from 4,000 qubits to 20M by networking 5,000 of the quantum computers IBM promised for 2025, in 2025, but it provides a trajectory for networked quantum computing as a horizontal scaling strategy.

4. He did not mention the $100B allocated this year by the Whitehouse/Congress for CRQC research.

What is his motive in giving us such an incomplete story with such a skewed conclusion? Is he working for a hedge fund that is shorting some stock? Or is he just a lay person trying to sound intelligent by writing about a field where they're not sufficiently informed?

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#95

Post by dilyevsky »

mattnewport wrote: post #42
drewbeck wrote: post #6

There’s also billions going into commercial fusion reactors, which haven’t turned net positive yet. The goal of the investment is to build that capability tho, same (I think?) as with quantum computing. Weird critique imo.

Thing is fusion is known to be possible - the sun and hydrogen bombs. Quantum Computing lacks equivalent existence proofs. There's a lot of abstract theory but no real indication it is possible to scale up in the real physical world to useful problem sizes and reasons to doubt that it is possible.

Neither of those are contained fusion. I think gp is implying that it might be impossible to have net energy gain for contained fusion (which currently seems to be the case even with most advanced designs)

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#96

Post by pfortuny »

curt15 wrote: post #85
sfpotter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The simple reason for this is that despite years of effort nobody has yet come close to building a quantum machine that is actually capable of solving practical problems. The current devices are so error-prone that any information one tries to process with them will almost instantly degenerate into noise. The problem only grows worse if the computer is scaled up (ie, the number of “qubits” increased)." + 5 subsequen…

Some quantum error correcting codes were recently demonstrated experimentally: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/103

With 17 q-bits. Not something I’d call breathtaking.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#97

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

cerol wrote: post #90
sicp-enjoyer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are describing the company dynamics accurately, but I can't help think this is just a terrible way to invest. No party has a concrete plan or vision for how to use it, they just throw money because there is a consensus of good feeling around it. Those good feelings were probably created through academic or corporate marketing efforts in the first place.

> but I can't help think this is just a terrible way to invest Picking a company to invest in only half the job, choosing how much to invest is the other half. It's a terrible way to invest if you put all your money into it. QC "changing the world" is a tail-end event. You allocate according to the risk.

I am not talking about investing in companies. I am talking about how these companies invest their R&D capital in projects.

> QC "changing the world" is a tail-end event. You allocate according to the risk

But, nobody has a clear idea how it's a risk. They just invest because others invest. You might as well allocate some capital to protect against giant aggressive pigs ruining the southern US.

To put it another way. What value is being provided by the managers of this capital? If they just put money in everything that seems popular in tech media (because it's a tail risk), then couldn't anyone do their job?

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#98

Post by upofadown »

The observation that important technologies required a long time from inception to practical use is common here. That is true but ignores the fact that there were a tremendous number of possible technologies available that could of eventually worked out. Only a very small number ever did.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#99

Post by [deleted] »

acomjean wrote: post #51
cerol wrote: post #39

This is how I think about it. It's insurance money. If you're a manager of a big company like IBM, Microsoft or Google, you have to align your current product portfolio and future portfolio in such a way that shows your investor that your company will keep growing, even if your current products are stagnant. You can surely say Quantum computing won't do much in next 5 years. But what about 10 years? 20 years? 30 year…

I mean these companies have Research and Development divisions. I was at IBM at the turn of the century when they spent 6 billion dollars on research. One of the pushes was to get research to focus on things they could market and make money with. But the big research plays (bell labs, xerox parc) seem to get less and less funding if they exist at all. A lot of the inventions of those places were monitized outside tho…

[deleted]

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#100

Post by [deleted] »

zmgsabst wrote: post #70
krastanov wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Seems a bit unfair to say it has been developed since the 80's. In 80's a couple of people (e.g. Feynman) noticed that if you have a quantum simulator, you can simulate chemistry in a way that a classical computer is seemingly incapable of. But the transmon (one of the first possibly viable implementations of a qubit) was not developed until the 00's and complete control of some of these systems (e.g. transmon cou…

To elaborate on the NN example: The perceptron was developed in 1940s and only became useful in the 2000-2010 range. So 60-70 years of development time. If we take 50 years as a baseline (faster than historic examples; but underestimating), we’d expect a quantum computer some time in the 2030s. Is anyone here hard objecting to QC in the 2030-2040 range?

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