Quantum computing for everyone
michaelnielsen.org
Quantum computing for everyone
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#2Sooo... when can I launch a quantum EC2 instance?
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#3Question for someone who knows more about this:
Is this the right way to think about it? What we need to do to write a "program" to solve a problem is:
1) Find a set of gates to setup the atoms so that they have the right input.
2) Find a set of gates that uses this input to solve the problem.
I know very little about quantum computation so any help is appreciated...
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#4Question for someone who knows more about this: Is this the right way to think about it? What we need to do to write a "program" to solve a problem is: 1) Find a set of gates to setup the atoms so that they have the right input. 2) Find a set of gates that uses this input to solve the problem. I know very little about quantum computation so any help is appreciated...
Take a look at Shor's algorithm[1] for factoring integers on a quantum computer. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, but it should show you what goes into creating an algorithm for a quantum computer. People complain about concurrent programming, they have another thing coming if quantum computers become commonplace. I suspect it will be more like programming an FPGA than a CPU.
In any case, as I understand it, you will need to add a third step, which is to extract the correct solution from the system's state, which is also non-trivial.
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#5I think the author didn't achieve his own goal: “Can you give me a simple, concrete explanation of how quantum computers work?”
The explanation, even though it doesn't involve any complicated math or technical stuff, is long, convoluted and full of excuses of why there can't be a simple explanation.
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#6Related: I'm still not satisfied with the answer as to why quantum cryptography's eavesdropper detection -- not possible with a Turing machine -- can't be embedded in a model of computation that goes beyond Turing-completeness:
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#7The guy seems like a quantum fanboy who does not understand what he is talking about. Isn't data management separate theory from the hardware - ie: using smaller objects to make computers does not change the management of the data.
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#8Question for someone who knows more about this: Is this the right way to think about it? What we need to do to write a "program" to solve a problem is: 1) Find a set of gates to setup the atoms so that they have the right input. 2) Find a set of gates that uses this input to solve the problem. I know very little about quantum computation so any help is appreciated...
Take a look at Shor's algorithm[1] for factoring integers on a quantum computer. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, but it should show you what goes into creating an algorithm for a quantum computer. People complain about concurrent programming, they have another thing coming if quantum computers become commonplace. I suspect it will be more like programming an FPGA than a CPU. In any case, as I understand i…
In any case, as I understand it, you will need to add a third step, which is to extract the correct solution from the system's state, which is also non-trivial.
Good point, I didn't think about retrieving the answer.
Is that something can be done with gates or is there another method?
Edit:
People complain about concurrent programming, they have another thing coming if quantum computers become commonplace. I suspect it will be more like programming an FPGA than a CPU.
Seems like you might be right in the short term, but I wonder if it will be true in the long term. E.g. once you get methods for doing a bunch of standard stuff you can put them together. Not sure if that works for quantum computing but maybe some other way of abstracting out the details.
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take a look at Shor's algorithm[1] for factoring integers on a quantum computer. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, but it should show you what goes into creating an algorithm for a quantum computer. People complain about concurrent programming, they have another thing coming if quantum computers become commonplace. I suspect it will be more like programming an FPGA than a CPU. In any case, as I understand i…
In any case, as I understand it, you will need to add a third step, which is to extract the correct solution from the system's state, which is also non-trivial. Good point, I didn't think about retrieving the answer. Is that something can be done with gates or is there another method? Edit: People complain about concurrent programming, they have another thing coming if quantum computers become commonplace. I suspect…
Good point, I didn't think about retrieving the answer. Is that something can be done with gates or is there another method?
My (simplistic) understanding is this: you need to think of the "registers" in a qc as not storing one value but essentially a probability distribution, so your operations are really convolutions of those distributions. "reading" from the register is a measurement, which collapses the wavefunction into a set of states which happen to share the value for the attribute you are measuring. The outcome of the measurement is random but governed by the probability distribution that the system has for that attribute at that point. You need to make the desired answer stand out in that distribution (i.e. more likely to come up), otherwise you won't have gained anything vs a classical computer.
Seems like you might be right in the short term, but I wonder if it will be true in the long term.
I'm having a hard time understanding this stuff at the micro level, whereas assembly language of a classical computer is trivial in comparison. I made the FPGA and concurrency analogy because you have to account for global state, not just the state of registers touched by one instruction. Except the "global state" in a qc is a different beast entirely. I guess I don't have a clue what these abstractions might look like so I'm going to accept that you may well be right.
Re: Quantum computing for everyone
#10The guy seems like a quantum fanboy who does not understand what he is talking about. Isn't data management separate theory from the hardware - ie: using smaller objects to make computers does not change the management of the data.
Quantum computing has nothing to do with making computers smaller.