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Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
11–20 of 237 posts
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#12Dumb question: Say I have a wooden stick and I break it in half in less than a second. Assume a computer would need several minutes to simulate everything that would've happened in the stick. I clearly got the output faster than a computer (and with more precision), so does this imply I'm doing anything particularly fascinating? I assume the same scenario is possible to concoct for a quantum computer. I assume it wou…
If you're in the stick making business and need to know how sticks break, the yes.
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#13The cited paper[1] references "random circuit sampling" which is defined in [2] which then gets so heavy into abstract math, and I give up. Can someone explain this in terms an EE or programmer can understand? [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11119 [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07872
> references "random circuit sampling"
It's either Monte Carlo or bullshit.
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#14Dumb question: Say I have a wooden stick and I break it in half in less than a second. Assume a computer would need several minutes to simulate everything that would've happened in the stick. I clearly got the output faster than a computer (and with more precision), so does this imply I'm doing anything particularly fascinating? I assume the same scenario is possible to concoct for a quantum computer. I assume it wou…
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Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#15"This is a very nice demonstration of quantum advantage. While a great achievement academically, the algorithm used does not really have real world practical applications, though." Not having real world applications is not necessarily damning, of course. Curious to know what implications this has for general algorithms. Reading this, it almost makes it sound like there will be some algorithms that quantum is better a…
My understanding is that quantum computers only have two real use cases, as of today: 1. Breaking crypto. 2. Simulating other quantum systems. For (1) it's basically all downsides. For (2) unless you're a particle phycisist you'll never need quantum computers. But that's now. Maybe there will be a killer app for it some day, changing everything. Or indeed, we could get it indirectly. Maybe simulating quantum systems…
If it is able to break crypto then surely that means it can do other "interesting" mathematical calculations that are currently extremely slow/hard though?
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that quantum computers only have two real use cases, as of today: 1. Breaking crypto. 2. Simulating other quantum systems. For (1) it's basically all downsides. For (2) unless you're a particle phycisist you'll never need quantum computers. But that's now. Maybe there will be a killer app for it some day, changing everything. Or indeed, we could get it indirectly. Maybe simulating quantum systems…
If it is able to break crypto then surely that means it can do other "interesting" mathematical calculations that are currently extremely slow/hard though?
So far, to my knowledge, not faster than a classical system. We've been searching for decades for a problem with a better quantum solution than a classical solution, and it's been a tough slog. These are, at least thus far and from my limited perspective, very special-purpose accelerators. Shor's algorithm is the one thing that comes to mind tbh.
"Breaking crypto" in this case isn't anything other than finding prime factors of an integer.
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#17Dumb question: Say I have a wooden stick and I break it in half in less than a second. Assume a computer would need several minutes to simulate everything that would've happened in the stick. I clearly got the output faster than a computer (and with more precision), so does this imply I'm doing anything particularly fascinating? I assume the same scenario is possible to concoct for a quantum computer. I assume it wou…
If you can control your experiment perfectly, then you don't need the simulation.
Now break the wooden stick in half while on the moon. In space. At absolute zero. While under acceleration. While spinning. While bombarding it with 10^100 neutrinos/second. And do it with 100'000 randomized iterations of the wooden fibers.
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#18Dumb question: Say I have a wooden stick and I break it in half in less than a second. Assume a computer would need several minutes to simulate everything that would've happened in the stick. I clearly got the output faster than a computer (and with more precision), so does this imply I'm doing anything particularly fascinating? I assume the same scenario is possible to concoct for a quantum computer. I assume it wou…
I don't think this is a stupid question at all- it actually touches on some pretty interesting topics. The human brain is absolutely fascinating, in particular because it is extremely energy efficient and fast at the tasks it does. The more we learn and understand how the brain is working the more we'll be able to improve a ton of computer science topics, from AI to signals processing and a whole bunch more in between.
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#19Dumb question: Say I have a wooden stick and I break it in half in less than a second. Assume a computer would need several minutes to simulate everything that would've happened in the stick. I clearly got the output faster than a computer (and with more precision), so does this imply I'm doing anything particularly fascinating? I assume the same scenario is possible to concoct for a quantum computer. I assume it wou…
One would be the direction of entropy. Breaking the stick is not "particularly fascinating" because you're going in the direction of increasing entropy.
However, _putting it back together_ is. In the simulation it takes no more effort to go one way or the other, while you probably cannot put the stick back together no matter how hard you tried.
A quantum question that is "interesting" would also be similar to finding order out of disorder (e.g. factoring).
Re: Google claims to have proved its supremacy with new quantum computer
#20The cited paper[1] references "random circuit sampling" which is defined in [2] which then gets so heavy into abstract math, and I give up. Can someone explain this in terms an EE or programmer can understand? [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11119 [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07872
> references "random circuit sampling" It's either Monte Carlo or bullshit.
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