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Willow, Our Quantum Chip

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Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#101

Post by bubblyworld »

deanCommie wrote: post #46

I don't want to judge people by their cover, but I want to confess to having those feelings right now. In this day and age, I feel an immediate sense of distrust to any technologist with the "Burning Man" aesthetic for lack of a better word. (which you can see in the author's wikipedia profile from an adjacent festival -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmut_Neven , as well as in this blog itself with his wristbands…

I don't share your mistrust of the aesthetic, but I think it's pretty natural to be skeptical of the out-group, so to speak, doubly so if you have no practical way of verifying their claims. At least you're honest about it!

I guess something to think about it that amongst a group like the "burners" there is huge variety in individual experience and skill. And even within a single human mind it's possible to have radically groundbreaking thoughts in one domain, and simultaneously be a total crack-pot in another. Linus Pauling and the vitamin C thing comes to mind. There's no such thing as an average person!

I guess we'll see what the quantum experts have to say about this in the weeks to come =)

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#102

Post by [deleted] »

winwang wrote: post #85
vessenes wrote: post #18

I’m a quantum dabbler so I’ll throw out an armchair reaction: this is a significant announcement. My memory is that 256 bit keys in non quantum resistant algos need something like 2500 qubits or so; and by that I mean generally useful programmable qubits. To show a bit over 100 qubits with stability, meaning the information survives a while, long enough to be read, and general enough to run some benchmarks on is some…

Edit after skimming arxiv preprint[1]: Yeah, this is pretty huge. They achieved the result with surface codes, which are general ECCs. The repetition code was used to further probe quantum ECC floor. "Just POC" likely doesn't do it justice. (Original comment): Also quantum dabbler (coincidentally dabbled in bitflip quantum error correction research). Skimmed the post/research blog. I believe the key point is the scal…

[deleted]

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#103

Post by kridsdale1 »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #79
jawns wrote: post #8

> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion. Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

I suspect the real issue is that Big Tech investors and executives (including Sundar Pichai) are utterly hopped up on sci-fi, and this sort of stuff convinces them to dedicate resources to quantum computing.

That explains metaverse funding at least.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#104

Post by DennisP »

whimsicalism wrote: post #49
gaze wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry -- the results don't add weight to one view or the other. The interpretations are equivalent.

not metaphysically equivalent. also, i’m not so certain it will always be untestable. i would have thought the same thing about hidden variables but i underestimated the cleverness of experimentalists

I think "experimentally equivalent" is what GP meant, and as of today, it holds true. Google's results are predicted by other interpretations just as well as by Everett. Maybe someday there will be a clever experiment to distinguish the models but just "we have a good QC" is not that.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#105

Post by kridsdale1 »

griomnib wrote: post #54
ComputerGuru wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t make sense to me because if we can borrow capacity to perform calculations then we can “borrow” an infinite amount of energy.

Climate change solved: steal energy from adjacent universes, pipe our carbon waste into theirs.

It’s “out of the environment”.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#106

Post by handfuloflight »

codeulike wrote: post #60

They opened the API for it and I'm sending requests but the response always comes back 300ms before I send the request, is there a way of handling that with try{} predestined{} blocks? Or do I need to use the Bootstrap Paradox library?

Have you tried using the Schrödinger Exception Handler? It catches errors both before and after they occur simultaneously, until you observe the stack trace.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#107

Post by Ar-Curunir »

melvinmelih wrote: post #100
jawns wrote: post #8

> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion. Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

> It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. If it's not, what would be your explanation for this significant improvement then?

I mean, that's like saying GPUs operate in parallel universes because they can do certain things thousands of times faster than CPUs.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#108

Post by fguerraz »

Am I oversimplifying in thinking that they’ve demonstrated that their quantum computer is better than at simulating a quantum system than a classical computer?

In which case, should I be impressed? I mean sure, it sounds like you’ve implemented a quantum VM.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#109

Post by spencerflem »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #72
pandemic_region wrote: post #50

> Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe. What computation would that be? Also, what is the relationship, if any, between quantum computing and AI? Are these technologies complementary?

"Also, what is the relationship, if any, between quantum computing and AI? Are these technologies complementary?" AI is limited in part by the computation available at training and runtime. If your computer is 10^X times faster, then your model is also "better". Thats why we have giant warehouses full of H100 chips pulling down a few megawatts from the grid right now. Quantum computing could theoretically allow your…

A quantum computer is not just a 10^X faster normal computer.

Are there AI algorithms that would benefit from quantum?

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#110

Post by GenerWork »

jawns wrote: post #8

> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion. Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

>Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

Doesn't this also mean that other universes have civilizations that could potentially borrow capacity from our universe, and if so, what would that look like?

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