My cat can behave as a cat would be expected to behave. And if we verify the measurements of her behaviour using a classical computing cluster - to make sure her behaviour really falls within the distribution of expected cat behaviour - thats a very complicated calculation that will take many processor-days. But my cat can just do that stuff in real time. Has my cat achieved Quantum Supremacy, and is there a trophy or something I can pick up somewhere for that?
Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
11–20 of 215 posts
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#12Preface: I know nothing about quantum computing. What exactly is a qubit? I'm not asking what does it mean, because I know there's superpositions and all that jazz, but as in...like, in an electronic circuit, what is a qubit? Is it made out of logic gates? Which ones? If we can make one qubit, can't we just make a bunch of them by copy and pasting circuits similar to how we used vacuum tubes in the 60s and 70s? How c…
I'm in the same boat. A qubit can have more than the two states that a transistor can have, got it. Okay, now what can we do with that? "crack encryption by simulating a state!" yeah but what? is that something I should be concerned about now? "hahaha no no no silly normie we'd need two thousand qubits for that, this machine only has 53!" oooookay, and you did that number in your head, how??? "we just solved the firs…
Since we're looking at Scott Aaronson, you might want to check out "Quantum Computing Since Democritus". It gives a good explanation of the math behind qubits and how they can be used. Best intro I know of.
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#13Preface: I know nothing about quantum computing. What exactly is a qubit? I'm not asking what does it mean, because I know there's superpositions and all that jazz, but as in...like, in an electronic circuit, what is a qubit? Is it made out of logic gates? Which ones? If we can make one qubit, can't we just make a bunch of them by copy and pasting circuits similar to how we used vacuum tubes in the 60s and 70s? How c…
for example an electron or a polarized photon. they can take the value 0 and 1 when measured but when not measured they can be in superposition states. Quantum physics forbids copying a qubit to create another, but you can initialize them en masse to to be in a superposition state. Those things are too tiny to be easily manipulated so 53 is quite an accomplishment.
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#14Preface: I know nothing about quantum computing. What exactly is a qubit? I'm not asking what does it mean, because I know there's superpositions and all that jazz, but as in...like, in an electronic circuit, what is a qubit? Is it made out of logic gates? Which ones? If we can make one qubit, can't we just make a bunch of them by copy and pasting circuits similar to how we used vacuum tubes in the 60s and 70s? How c…
I'm in the same boat. A qubit can have more than the two states that a transistor can have, got it. Okay, now what can we do with that? "crack encryption by simulating a state!" yeah but what? is that something I should be concerned about now? "hahaha no no no silly normie we'd need two thousand qubits for that, this machine only has 53!" oooookay, and you did that number in your head, how??? "we just solved the firs…
Schrodinger's cat in unopened box is 1 qubit = it's alive and dead at the same time. When the box is opened to observe the result, the quantum state "decoheres" - decays to 1 bit result.
Now imagine 53 such boxes, interconnected by quantum gates. The 53 qubits combined are in all of 2^53 states at once. The gates can be set up such that some combinations like "cat 1 alive", "cat 2 dead", etc. are much more likely result than others, after the boxes are opened. And all this computation is done in one step, whereby the classical computer must do 2^53 steps to get the same result.
To have 53 cats all undisturbed in these dead/alive states so that computation is done without errors is very technically challenging :)
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#15Preface: I know nothing about quantum computing. What exactly is a qubit? I'm not asking what does it mean, because I know there's superpositions and all that jazz, but as in...like, in an electronic circuit, what is a qubit? Is it made out of logic gates? Which ones? If we can make one qubit, can't we just make a bunch of them by copy and pasting circuits similar to how we used vacuum tubes in the 60s and 70s? How c…
I'm in the same boat. A qubit can have more than the two states that a transistor can have, got it. Okay, now what can we do with that? "crack encryption by simulating a state!" yeah but what? is that something I should be concerned about now? "hahaha no no no silly normie we'd need two thousand qubits for that, this machine only has 53!" oooookay, and you did that number in your head, how??? "we just solved the firs…
Do you know linear algebra?
If you have a collection of n qubits, the state of those corresponds to a unit vector in a 2^n dimensional space over the field of complex numbers.
You can do certain linear operations (iirc, only unitary ones. I wouldn’t claim all unitary ones either) to change the state. You can also do a measurement, which has a random outcome, following the Born rule.
So, it isn’t really just “each of them has more than 2 possible states”. That can be the case with something classical, and has been done before (there have been ternary computers. Binary computers won out. Ternary computers (or quaternary, etc. etc.) wouldn’t be particularly special.)
You can’t just think of each of the qubits as having a state always entirely independent of the rest of the qubits.
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same boat. A qubit can have more than the two states that a transistor can have, got it. Okay, now what can we do with that? "crack encryption by simulating a state!" yeah but what? is that something I should be concerned about now? "hahaha no no no silly normie we'd need two thousand qubits for that, this machine only has 53!" oooookay, and you did that number in your head, how??? "we just solved the firs…
Schrodinger's cat in unopened box is 1 qubit = it's alive and dead at the same time. When the box is opened to observe the result, the quantum state "decoheres" - decays to 1 bit result. Now imagine 53 such boxes, interconnected by quantum gates. The 53 qubits combined are in all of 2^53 states at once. The gates can be set up such that some combinations like "cat 1 alive", "cat 2 dead", etc. are much more likely res…
I don’t think the cat thing helps to explain this, especially with the finality association of “dead”.
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#17My cat can behave as a cat would be expected to behave. And if we verify the measurements of her behaviour using a classical computing cluster - to make sure her behaviour really falls within the distribution of expected cat behaviour - thats a very complicated calculation that will take many processor-days. But my cat can just do that stuff in real time. Has my cat achieved Quantum Supremacy, and is there a trophy o…
That sounds like question 12 from the FAQ ;)
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do it with electron spin or photon polarization or by any number of properties, but it's the state of a fundamental particle. It's an entirely new type of computing apparatus, using the fundamental state of particles. No electron circuits, those won't work. And it's expensive because of the above. These things are massive, have to be kept at cyrogenic temperature, and isolation gets harder the more particles…
I thought a qubit could also be implemented with current going around a superconductor loop. Is that incorrect?
You can implement them like that. Anything that has a quantum state that doesn’t decohere too fast will work. The hard part thus far has been that almost everything does decohere too fast.
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do it with electron spin or photon polarization or by any number of properties, but it's the state of a fundamental particle. It's an entirely new type of computing apparatus, using the fundamental state of particles. No electron circuits, those won't work. And it's expensive because of the above. These things are massive, have to be kept at cyrogenic temperature, and isolation gets harder the more particles…
I thought a qubit could also be implemented with current going around a superconductor loop. Is that incorrect?
No, that's indeed a quite popular approach.
Re: Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same boat. A qubit can have more than the two states that a transistor can have, got it. Okay, now what can we do with that? "crack encryption by simulating a state!" yeah but what? is that something I should be concerned about now? "hahaha no no no silly normie we'd need two thousand qubits for that, this machine only has 53!" oooookay, and you did that number in your head, how??? "we just solved the firs…
Schrodinger's cat in unopened box is 1 qubit = it's alive and dead at the same time. When the box is opened to observe the result, the quantum state "decoheres" - decays to 1 bit result. Now imagine 53 such boxes, interconnected by quantum gates. The 53 qubits combined are in all of 2^53 states at once. The gates can be set up such that some combinations like "cat 1 alive", "cat 2 dead", etc. are much more likely res…
Here .. finding the circuit that saves more cats from death is already a useful thing. Of course, i dont see an obvious algorithm to search for that circuit so it would have to be brute force. but now this computer makes even brute force possible