Forgive me for butting into stuff i do not understand,but you guys are quoting Scott Aaranson the same way most people quote holy books.He could be wrong,you know.
Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
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Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#12Forgive me for butting into stuff i do not understand,but you guys are quoting Scott Aaranson the same way most people quote holy books.He could be wrong,you know.
Please feel free to counter Aaronson's assertions.
Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#13This is a puff piece. As http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 makes clear, the current incarnation of D-Wave looks cool and costs a fortune, but is slower than a desktop PC running properly-optimized code. And that optimized code only needed to be written once because it solves the problem that D-Wave asks us to reduce all problems to before we can use D-Wave.
As http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 admits, large-scale entanglement most likely does take place in D-Wave's computer. So now he just argues that their proof of concept prototype is not as efficient as classical devices that have been perfected over fifty years. If we lived in a world where nuclear energy was still just a theoretical possibility, and you had a company D-Uranium trying to build the first reac…
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Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#14This is a puff piece. As http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 makes clear, the current incarnation of D-Wave looks cool and costs a fortune, but is slower than a desktop PC running properly-optimized code. And that optimized code only needed to be written once because it solves the problem that D-Wave asks us to reduce all problems to before we can use D-Wave.
As http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 admits, large-scale entanglement most likely does take place in D-Wave's computer. So now he just argues that their proof of concept prototype is not as efficient as classical devices that have been perfected over fifty years. If we lived in a world where nuclear energy was still just a theoretical possibility, and you had a company D-Uranium trying to build the first reac…
It would make me think that nuclear energy isn't yet a practical alternative for electrical generation, and anyone trying to sell me a nuclear generating station must be up to something.
Why, what would it make you think?
Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#15Forgive me for butting into stuff i do not understand,but you guys are quoting Scott Aaranson the same way most people quote holy books.He could be wrong,you know.
I give him that much credit because if he was wrong, it would be easy to demonstrate. Give this computer an instance of a problem, show it performs much better than the best conventional computer. If this bar is met, there's only so much obfuscation that can be thrown up, if this bar is not met, there's only so much obfuscation that can be thrown up. So far it seems the bar has not been met.
Scott Aaronson has agreed that they've reached a new high, which also helps his credibility in my mind. But they have not reached what they claim they've reached. And being able to solve only one highly restricted problem is a long way away from having a quantum computer. Basically, if you look at what D-Wave actually has, it's a great deal less impressive than their marketing would like you to believe.
Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#16Any pointers to a technical presentation on how D-Wave's (or any other) quantum computing is physically implemented? For example, classical computers use silicon doped with impurities to form gates, and connected with metal traces. Are quantum chips created in a similar manner (using different materials), but operate at extreme cold temperatures, for example? Or is it done using a liquid or gas structure with lasers? So far I've only seen the high-level logical descriptions, but nothing about the physical side.
Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#17Are there any schematics anywhere for how quantum forces could be used to add together two integers represented in binary?
Does D-Wave have any top secret schematics or diagrams we could look over?
Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#18Are there any schematics anywhere for how quantum forces could be used to add together two integers represented in binary? Does D-Wave have any top secret schematics or diagrams we could look over?
I used to have links to lectures explaining this, but they seem to have 404`ed.
The general approach is to view quantum computers as a series of quantum gates. Specifically, the CC-Not gate takes 3 inputs and, if the first 2 are true, it toggles the third. This is sufficient to build an arbitrary gate, including a binary adder.
I would try explaining how these gates might be constructed, but its been so long since I've studied it that I would probably butcher the explanation.
Re: Quantum Or Not, New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else
#19To be honest I never expected that we’d live to see a quantum computer in this decade. Despite of what D-Wave’s machine actually is the fact remains that we’re pretty close to achieving this milestone. How would this change the computer industry though is something I can’t even start to fathom. What really interests me though as a programmer is whether we’d have to change our tools too when quantum computers become t…
If this interest you, check out QCL [1], it is a quantum computer programming language and emulator.
I suspect that quantum computers will, at best, be simmilar to how we view GPU's now, good for specialized programming tasks.