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Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

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Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#71

Post by bawolff »

toasted-subs wrote: post #62
lisper wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wait? Just go read the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6 In the last sentence of the abstract you will find: "These results ... indicate a viable path to practical quantum advantage." And in the conclusions: "Although the random circuits used in the dynamic learning demonstration remain a toy model for Hamiltonians that are of practical relevance, the scheme is readily applicable to real p…

A consistent theme of Quantum Computing is setting up the problem to have the hardwired achieve nicely to get a good news article to get more funding. Im pretty reluctant to make any negative comments about these kinds of posts be cause it will prevent actually achieving the desired outcome.

Quantum computing hardware is still at its infancy.

The problem is not with these papers (or at least not ones like this one) but how they are reported. If quantum computing is going to suceed it needs to do the baby steps before it can do the big steps, and at the current rate the big leaps are probably decades away. There is nothing wrong with that, its a hard problem and its going to take time. But then the press comes in and reports that quantum computing is going to run a marathon tomorrow which is obviously not true and confuses everyone.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#73

Post by conradev »

cyberpunk wrote: post #59
deliriumchn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, not really, PQC is already being discussed in pretty much every relevant crypto thing for couple years alearady and there are multiple PQC algos ready to protect important data in banking etc as well

I don’t really understand the threat to banking. Let’s say you crack the encryption key used in my bank between a java payment processing system and a database server. You can’t just inject transactions or something. Is the threat that internal network traffic could be read? Transactions all go to clearing houses anyway. Is it to protect browser->webapp style banking? those all use ec by now anyway, and even if they…

The big threat is passively breaking TLS, so it’s browser traffic. Or, any internet traffic?

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#74

Post by jdiff »

LPisGood wrote: post #63
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you right now, no way my kids would agree until they're at least adults. They don't even know what asymmetric cryptography is.

I’m confused, are your kids major Bitcoin miners?

GGP used the term "minors," GP is running with the typo.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#76

Post by terminalbraid »

elAhmo wrote: post #13

Definitely not a quantum expert, but I have a feeling that news like this have been happening for more than a decade, without anything usable.

It's what happens when companies are driven by profit rather than making accurate scientific statements that reputation is built by and further research funding is predicated on.

Hyperbolic claims like this are for shareholders who aren't qualified to judge for themselves because they're interested in future money and not actual understanding. This is what happens when you delegate science to corporations.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#77

Post by FergusArgyll »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #54
bilsbie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why bitcoin wouldn’t update its software in such a case. The majority of minors just need to agree. But why wouldn’t they if the alternative is going to zero?

Sir Alexander Dane: MINERS, not MINORS.

That actually confused me. I thought he he meant "the majority of the minority" while I was pretty sure it's just a simple majority

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#78

Post by iwontberude »

andrewla wrote: post #61
bilsbie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why bitcoin wouldn’t update its software in such a case. The majority of minors just need to agree. But why wouldn’t they if the alternative is going to zero?

How could updating the software possibly make a difference here? If the encryption is cracked, then who is to say who owns which Bitcoin? As soon as I try to transfer any coin that I own, I expose my public key, your "Quantum Computer" cracks it, and you offer a competing transaction with a higher fee to send the Bitcoin to your slush fund. No amount of software fixes can update this. In theory once an attack becomes…

As you alluded to, network can have two parallel chains where wallets can be upgraded by users asynchronously before PQC is “needed” (a long way away still) which will leave some wallets vulnerable and others safe. It’s not that herculean as most wallets (not most BTC) are in exchanges. The whales will be sufficiently motivated to switch and everyone else it will happen in the background.

A nice benefit is it solves the problem with Satoshi’s (of course not a real person or owner) wallet. Satoshi’s wallet becomes the defacto quantum advantage prize. That’s a lot of scratch for a research lab.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#79

Post by steego »

Rover222 wrote: post #23
nashashmi wrote: post #10

Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect.

Nihilism is to trendy right now

Nihilism is one response to disillusionment.

Another response is to come to terms with a possibly meaningless and Sisyphean reality and to keep pushing the boulder (that you care about) up the hill anyway.

I’m glad the poster is concerned and/or disillusioned about the hype, hyperbole and deception associated with this type of research.

It suggests he still cares.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#80

Post by auxiliarymoose »

nashashmi wrote: post #10

Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect.

From the article:

> in partnership with The University of California, Berkeley, we ran the Quantum Echoes algorithm on our Willow chip...

And the author affiliations in the Nature paper include:

Princeton University; UC Berkeley; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Caltech; Harvard; UC Santa Barbara; University of Connecticut; UC Santa Barbara; MIT; UC Riverside; Dartmouth College; Max Planck Institute.

This is very much in partnership with universities and they clearly state that too.

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