Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

scottaaronson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 97 posts

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#51

Post by blazespin »

gjm11 wrote: post #36
JanezStupar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand some of the words, but the article itself seems to me as ancient Greek. Can someone explain to me what the hell the whole story is about?

BACKGROUND: Quantum computing If you are able to get substantial numbers of "quantum bits" to stay entangled with one another, and hence behave in all those counterintuitive ways quantum things do, then you can (in principle) use the resulting machinery to perform some kinds of computations faster than any "conventional" computer can do them. Making that actually happen is an enormous engineering challenge. No one's…

http://dwave.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/first-ever-head-to-hea...

Geordie's reply to Scott's blog: "The majority of that post is simply factually incorrect.

As one example, Troyer hasn’t even had access yet to the system Cathy benchmarked (the Vesuvius – based system). (!) Yes Rainier could be beat by dedicated solvers — it was really slow! Vesuvius can’t (at least for certain types of problems). Another is he thinks we only benchmarked against cplex (not true) and he thinks cplex is just an exact solver (not true). These types of gross misunderstanding permeate the whole thing.

I used to find this stuff vaguely amusing in an irritating kind of way. Now I just find it boring and I wonder why anyone listens to a guy who’s been wrong exactly 100% of the time about everything. Update your priors, people!!

If you want to know what’s really going on, listen to the real experts. Like Hartmut.

http://googleresearch.blogspot.ca/2013/05/launching-quantum-...

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#52

Post by cantos »

blazespin wrote: post #51
gjm11 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BACKGROUND: Quantum computing If you are able to get substantial numbers of "quantum bits" to stay entangled with one another, and hence behave in all those counterintuitive ways quantum things do, then you can (in principle) use the resulting machinery to perform some kinds of computations faster than any "conventional" computer can do them. Making that actually happen is an enormous engineering challenge. No one's…

http://dwave.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/first-ever-head-to-hea... Geordie's reply to Scott's blog: "The majority of that post is simply factually incorrect. As one example, Troyer hasn’t even had access yet to the system Cathy benchmarked (the Vesuvius – based system). (!) Yes Rainier could be beat by dedicated solvers — it was really slow! Vesuvius can’t (at least for certain types of problems). Another is he thinks w…

As far as I can tell, nothing in your second link is inconsistent with anything Scott has written.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#54

Post by blazespin »

cantos wrote: post #52
blazespin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://dwave.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/first-ever-head-to-hea... Geordie's reply to Scott's blog: "The majority of that post is simply factually incorrect. As one example, Troyer hasn’t even had access yet to the system Cathy benchmarked (the Vesuvius – based system). (!) Yes Rainier could be beat by dedicated solvers — it was really slow! Vesuvius can’t (at least for certain types of problems). Another is he thinks w…

As far as I can tell, nothing in your second link is inconsistent with anything Scott has written.

Not mine, Geordie's!

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#55

Post by yew »

rwmj wrote: post #47

This thing wasn't delivered by aliens. For $10m isn't there an instruction book that describes what it's supposed to do? Can't they take it apart and look inside it?

We know what it's supposed to do. We don't know what it's actually doing - and neither do the people who built it, not with any certainty.

This is a relatively ill-understood discipline and a very fragile machine. 'Take it apart and look inside' won't tell you much about what happens when you turn it on. In that regard it might as well have been built by aliens. (Okay, it's probably not quite that bad.)

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#56

Post by blazespin »

blazespin wrote: post #51
gjm11 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BACKGROUND: Quantum computing If you are able to get substantial numbers of "quantum bits" to stay entangled with one another, and hence behave in all those counterintuitive ways quantum things do, then you can (in principle) use the resulting machinery to perform some kinds of computations faster than any "conventional" computer can do them. Making that actually happen is an enormous engineering challenge. No one's…

http://dwave.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/first-ever-head-to-hea... Geordie's reply to Scott's blog: "The majority of that post is simply factually incorrect. As one example, Troyer hasn’t even had access yet to the system Cathy benchmarked (the Vesuvius – based system). (!) Yes Rainier could be beat by dedicated solvers — it was really slow! Vesuvius can’t (at least for certain types of problems). Another is he thinks w…

Scott's gauntlet throw down: "Now, as for the difference between the 128-qubit machine and the 512-qubit one: based on the results Troyer explained to me (some of which, unfortunately, are not yet public), I see Geordie’s bet and raise it. Give Troyer and his postdocs full access to the Vesuvius-based system. If they can’t outperform it classically within a year or so, I will eat my words."

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#57

Post by cantos »

blazespin wrote: post #54
cantos wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, nothing in your second link is inconsistent with anything Scott has written.

Not mine, Geordie's!

I see now. I guess since there wasn't a closing quotation mark my brain just decided to invent one at a random point.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#58

Post by antrix »

nraynaud wrote: post #15
shawabawa3 wrote: post #11

Probably the biggest point to take away from the article is this: > For years, I tirelessly repeated that D-Wave hadn’t even provided evidence that its qubits were entangled—and that, while you can have entanglement with no quantum speedup, you can’t possibly have a quantum speedup without at least the capacity to generate entanglement. Now, I’d say, D-Wave finally has cleared the evidence-for-entanglement bar—and, w…

I love this idea of having a computing system that might not work as advertised but still produce the right results in a repeatable manner. When the ESA had a computing system that did not work as advertised, they blew up the GNP of an african country and went straight to the textbooks.

> When the ESA had a computing system ..

That sounds interesting. Any link?

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#59

Post by marshray »

antrix wrote: post #58
nraynaud wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea of having a computing system that might not work as advertised but still produce the right results in a repeatable manner. When the ESA had a computing system that did not work as advertised, they blew up the GNP of an african country and went straight to the textbooks.

> When the ESA had a computing system .. That sounds interesting. Any link?

I think he may be referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501#Launch_fai...

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#60

Post by marshray »

DanBC wrote: post #40

PR departments have to release good publicity. Going too far is sleazy. So is the recent D-Wave stuff just a combination of good PR and lazy journos, or are D-Wave being sleazy? I guess it doesn't help that most people have no idea about quantum anything (let alone computing); or about massively parallel or P=NP etc.

There's an old joke a computer salesmen once told me:

Q: What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?

A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.

Post reply on HN