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D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

scottaaronson.com

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Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#61

Post by marshray »

marshray wrote: post #60
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.

Q: What's the difference between a classical computer salesman and a quantum computer salesman?

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#62

Post by mikeash »

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.

That really confuses me. I haven't been following the story, but how can there possibly be questions over whether the thing is doing what they say it is? Are the results that ill-defined?

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#64

Post by varelse »

prawks wrote: post #30
sbierwagen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Monte_Carlo ?

Sounds an awful lot like Monte Carlo to me as well.

It's not quite like it from what I just read, it almost seems like it's halfway between Quantum Monte Carlo and a multi-armed bandit.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#65

Post by jjs »

nraynaud wrote: post #9

Is there a SDK? I'd like to port a NES simulator. (there is a conjecture that anything remotely able to do an addition will be used for emulating a Nintendo console)

Maybe a solver for classic Nintendo games?

http://jeremykun.com/2012/03/22/nintendo-np-hard/

(Caveat: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Com... )

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#66

Post by KVFinn »

crm416 wrote: post #33

Aaronson is fabulous. In my opinion, possibly the best technical author around these days. If you haven't already, his new book[1] is absolutely worth checking out, especially if you're unfamiliar with quantum. --- [1] : http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aar...

His book is seriously awesome. It's in a weird space technically -- not sure I'd recommend it to someone who didn't take a least a few math or cs courses as an undergrad. But if you have, wow, it really shines some new light on things you thought you probably understood well.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#67

Post by mtdewcmu »

Quantum computing reminds me of power from nuclear fusion: it's always 15 years away. I was awfully surprised when I read that D-Wave was already selling quantum computers. I'm glad that someone is willing to counter the hype. I find truth more interesting than fiction.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#68

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

It has the potential for a "quantum speedup" in the way that D-Wave's marketing defines that term. Just keep in mind that it has no resemblance to the usual meaning in a quantum computing context.

The D-Wave is not a quantum computer (as the term is normaly used), and was never meant to be one.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#69

Post by marcosdumay »

flatline wrote: post #38
smutticus wrote: post #5

I'm glad there are people who understand these things. I hope some day when the field of quantum computing congeals a bit more us mere mortals can begin to understand it as well.

I know pretty much nothing of the physics and very little of the logic, but having listened to a few talks from the CS side of the field, it mostly looks like a combination of: - Different hardware. This boils down to different gates/primitive operations, ala [1]. There are currently lots of different proposed methods of how to build the hardware, but I don't know that much about how the physical circuits in a tradit…

There are a few complications, like the impossibility of clonning a state, and the rsult being probabilistic. Also, there is the entire "let's operate that in a mixture of all possible integers" thing, but when I got to read about it, it was surprizinly possible to understand.

Re: D-Wave: Truth finally starts to emerge

#70

Post by marcosdumay »

headcanon wrote: post #34

It seems to me that all the hyperbole is about raised expectations. Hell, the fact they can even get something like this to work, and are able to determine (somewhat) that it is working the way they intended is enough to get me excited. I don't care if the QC they built performs faster or slower than a classical algorithm, because that stuff will simply come with time as we understand more about how QC works. With cl…

Yes, the problem is about expectations. D-Wave told everybody that they made a quantum computer, when in fact they've redefined the term to mean something else.

Well, that something else is working, and altough a nice physics experiment, it still lacks any real world utility.

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