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Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

news.mit.edu

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Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#3
post #2

> "A mainstream media article about quantum computer that starts with a reference to D-Wave can be safely ignored" marcosdumay, HN, 1 hour ago

I think there's an obvious exception for MIT's news, especially when talking to Aaronson who has loudly been challenging D-Wave's quantum claims for years.

Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#4
post #2

> "A mainstream media article about quantum computer that starts with a reference to D-Wave can be safely ignored" marcosdumay, HN, 1 hour ago

I think there's an obvious exception for MIT's news, especially when talking to Aaronson who has loudly been challenging D-Wave's quantum claims for years.

My general rule is to ignore anything that comes from MIT news as low quality anyway, so no conflict there.

Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#5
If you came here like I did, thinking "HEY! That's old news!". You are correct. This added bonus is an interview of Aaronson for MIT News about his response to the google paper (which he previously blogged about). The original blog post has an update from Aaronson:

" MIT News now has a Q&A with me about the new Google paper. I’m really happy with how the Q&A turned out; people who had trouble understanding this blog post might find the Q&A easier. Thanks very much to Larry Hardesty for arranging it."

EDIT: It is definitely worth the read. A concise laymans summary of the original post and outline of the issues still to be overcome by D-Wave.

Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an obvious exception for MIT's news, especially when talking to Aaronson who has loudly been challenging D-Wave's quantum claims for years.

My general rule is to ignore anything that comes from MIT news as low quality anyway, so no conflict there.

Found the Caltech guy.

Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#7
post #2

> "A mainstream media article about quantum computer that starts with a reference to D-Wave can be safely ignored" marcosdumay, HN, 1 hour ago

That quote is correct, but you need to understand the context: Scott Aaronson is pretty much the entire reason why you can safely ignore any article about D-Wave, because he's the one doing the legwork to debunk their BS. So articles from/about him are exempt.

Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#9
"There were $150 million dollars that went into designing this special-purpose hardware for this D-Wave machine and making it as fast possible. So in some sense, it’s no surprise that this special-purpose hardware could get a constant-factor speedup over a classical computer for the problem of simulating itself."

I kinda wonder how much money scott thinks goes into most chip hardware ;-)

(I think the special vs general purpose argument is certainly true, but citing the money numbers to bolster it seems ... silly)

Re: Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper

#10
TL;DR version: If there's any quantum phenomena going on in that device, it is only happening within the 8-qubit domains and not between them.

Bonus food for thought: how much more of a speedup factor would an ASIC farm provide compared to a general purpose CPU for that particular use case if you threw $150M on it?

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