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Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

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Re: Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

#31

Post by tripledry »

echoangle wrote: post #29
yorwba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to simulate the classical physics of fairly large game worlds using fairly small classical computer. If you wanted to model it using quantum physics instead (where quantum computers would theoretically have an advantage) said computer would need so many qubits that it would be much larger than the world it's supposed to simulate, while the additional realism would be essentially imperceptible to the pla…

> It's possible to simulate the classical physics of fairly large game worlds using fairly small classical computer. Not really, almost everything is faked and not really a physics sim. Imagine a world like GTA but every material has realistic deformation and destruction. I’m not saying quantum computers would be able to do that, but it’s not like current video games are at a point where more compute wouldn’t improve…

> while the additional realism would be essentially imperceptible to the player

Personally for me this is the relevant part.

I can ofc imagine some niche games like Kerbal Space Program with complete realism, but I'm not convinced it makes it more enjoyable to play. Would be interesting to see for sure.

Re: Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

#35

Post by luma »

himata4113 wrote: post #30
hannob wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction would be that it won't become mainstream. Even if it will be practically possible to build quantum computers for average users (given they currently rely on complex physical experiments, one can doubt that), there's the question of whether there's a need for "mainstream" quantum computing. As has often been said, quantum computers aren't some magical thing that makes every computation faster. They are f…

Any kind of quantum workload would live in servers since their capabilities will likely never be latency sensitive. I think what is more interesting is finding a way to utilize the fact that quantum information is capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, obviously observation of the data is bound the same limitations as we have today, but we could scale bandwidth by encoding data and "teleporting" it to t…

No quantum process currently known allows for information transfer faster than the speed of light.

Re: Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

#37

Post by dtj1123 »

jdw64 wrote: post #2

When quantum computing becomes mainstream, what will be the first standard programming language? I wonder what the 'C' of quantum computers will be

Right now, quantum programs are commonly written in QASM, which essentially expresses operations that are the quantum analogues of classical logic applied to individual qubits. If you want to compose those primitives into higher level structures you just call them from a higher level language like Python or Julia and use the provided means of abstraction.

The 'C of quantum computers' as a concept doesn't really make sense, because the architecture of a quantum computer is fundamentally different to that of a classical one. I can go into more detail if anyone cares. Source: a masters in theoretical physics with a focus on quantum information processing.

Re: Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

#38

Post by 0xEF »

"Tech giant Microsoft announced today it plans to build a useful quantum computer in just 3 years"

Leading with this dubious claim is fine comedy. Microsoft can barely build a useful conventional computer that runs its own platform and associated products. The Surface Book 3's being used at my job all launch Teams, Excel and Outlook like they're perpetually struggling to get out of bed. The Surface Pros have display issues minutes out of the box. This foolish Dash to Quantum will result in a lot of disappointment as unreliable rushed-to-market hardware is tauted by companies like Microsoft that are historically fond of doing just that.

And no, I don't think quantum computing is all hype. There is definitely meat on the bone, even if it only returns us to the somewhat annoying days of time sharing that most HN readers are probably too young to remember. But these idiots are fueling the hype train for the sake of quick-buck valuation, puffing for an audience that is increasingly tired of over-promising and under-delivering to the point where we will finally have an actual quantum computer and nobody will give a shit, especially after this whole AI circus has continued to prove itself an expensive pagent full of mummers and gimmicks.

Re: Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

#39

Post by subroutine »

iamkrazy wrote: post #32

Will QC make LLMs faster/better?

In theory, quantum computers could provide dramatic speedups for certain linear algebra operations (eg. matrix inversion, eigenvalue estimation). The catch is that many NN training algorithms need all the data to be stored in qRAM so the QC can access matrices efficiently. Loading in a massive dataset will likely be more difficult than the computations, eliminating the quantum advantage. This is analogous to having an extraordinarily fast processor attached to a slow af hard drive inside a neutrino storm.

Re: Microsoft doubles down on controversial quantum computing claims

#40

Post by tclancy »

Terr_ wrote: post #28
echoangle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simulating physics (also probably not something average joe wants to do every day) Maybe this will be used for video games at some point? Saying that this will never happen feels a bit like what people were saying about computers when they were filling rooms and cost a fortune, and now everyone has a few of them and finds a lot of uses for them.

Intel 486 Q X, now with quantum math coprocessor. :p

“Intel inside! Maybe.”
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