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Willow, Our Quantum Chip

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Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#171

Post by bee_rider »

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…

I think some element of it might be: Shor’s algorithm has been known of for 30 years, and hypothetically could be used to decrypt captured communications, right? So, retroactively I will have been dumb for not having switched to a quantum-resistant scheme. And, dumb in a way that a bunch of academic nerds have been pointing out for decades.

That level of embarrassment is frankly difficult to face. And it would be devastating to the self-image of a bunch of “practical” security gurus.

Therefore any progress must be an illusion. In the real world, the threats are predictable and mistakes don’t slowly snowball into a crisis. See also, infrastructure.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#172

Post by r3trohack3r »

nobrains wrote: post #169
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?

What happens when you don't send the request after receiving the response? Please try and report back.

You unlock the "You've met a terrible fate." achievement [1]

[1] https://outerwilds.fandom.com/wiki/Achievements

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#173

Post by dekhn »

zelon88 wrote: post #135

> 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, a prediction first made by David Deutsch. Can someone explain to me how he made the jump from "we achieved a meaninful threshold in quantum computing performance" to "The multiverse is probably real."

The explanation is that Hartmut Neven has a bunch of sci-fi beliefs and somehow has managed to hold onto his job and even get to write parts of press releases.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#174

Post by wasabi991011 »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #128
wasabi991011 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not what that means. Not sure what you mean by the "that" when you say "if that's true", but there is nothing in this thread or by google that is anywhere close to breaking encryption.

How are you so sure? If something that takes years is completed in minutes, how is encryption safe?

Because the "something" in question is not decryption. It's actually specifically something with no useful result, just a benchmark.

Decryption with quantum computers is still likely decades away, as others have pointed out.

To be specific, the best know quantum factoring did 15 = 3x5, and when 35 was not able to be factored when attempted. Most experimental demonstrations have stopped in recent years due to how pointless it currently is.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#175

Post by Vecr »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #165
wasabi991011 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll remind you of the quote that started this thread: "Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?" In this context, your opinion and Deutsch's opinion don't matter. The question is about whether the idea is common in the field or not.

Okay. I just don't understand. Are you saying Quantum Computers are also implemented without assuming the computations run in parallel universe?

I don't know what he's saying, but I'm saying that the answer to your question is "Yes," unless quantum computers behave differently than expected.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#176

Post by duderific »

rafram wrote: post #44
klipt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon: "are alien universes slowing down your internet? Click here to learn more!" Reminds me of the Aorist Rods from Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.

Well there has to be some reason I'm not getting the "gigabit" speeds I was quoted.

You were probably quoted "up to" gigabit speed. Which means anything from zero to gigabit is acceptable.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#177

Post by wasabi991011 »

LeftHandPath wrote: post #156
thrance wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The error rates given are still horrendous and nowhere near low enough for the Quantum Fourier Transform used by Shor's algorithm. Taking qubit connectivity into account, a single CX between 2 qubits that are 10 edges aways gives an error rate of 1.5%. Also, the more qubits you have/the more instructions are in your program, the faster the quantum state collapses. Exponentially so. Qubit connectivity is still ridicul…

Re: AI, it's a long way off still. The big limitation to anything quantum is always going to be decoherence and t-time [0]. To do anything with ML, you'll need whole circuit (more complex than shor's) just to initialize the data on the quantum device; the algorithms to do this are complex (exponential) [1]. So, you have to run a very expensive data-initialization circuit, and only then can you start to run your ML ci…

> I'm curious if EC can mitigate the sub-par decoherence times.

The main EC paper referenced in this blog post showed that the logical qubit lifetime using a distance-7 code (all 105 qubits) was double the lifetime of the physical qubits of the same machine.

I'm not sure how lifetime relates to decoherence time, but if that helps please let me know.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#178

Post by wasabi991011 »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #127
echelon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google could put themselves and everyone else out of business if the algorithms that underpin our ability to do e-commerce and financial transactions can be defeated. Goodbye not just to Bitcoin, but also Visa, Stripe, Amazon shopping, ...

Why is no one else talking about this? I came here to see a discussion about this and encryption.

Because this result is still very far from anything related to practical decryption.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#179

Post by andrewla »

This is yet another attempt to posit NISQ results (Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum) as demonstrations of quantum supremacy. This does not allow us to do useful computational work; it's just making the claim that a bathtub full of water can do fluid dynamic simulations faster than a computer with a bathtub-full-of-water-number-of-cores can do the same computation.

If history is any guide we'll soon see that there are problems with the fidelity (the system they use to verify that the results are "correct") or problems with the difficulty of the underlying problem, as happened with Google's previous attempt to demonstrate quantum supremacy [1].

[1] https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2024/12/09/the-case-against-g... -- note that although coincidentally published the same day as this announcement, this is talking about Google's previous results, not Willow.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#180

Post by LeftHandPath »

softwaredoug wrote: post #164

With this plus the weather model announcement. I’m curious what people think about the meta question on why corporate labs like Google DeepMind etc seem to make more progress on big problems than academia? There are a lot of critiques about academia. In particular that it’s so grant obsessed you have to stay focused on your next grant all the time. This environment doesnt seem to reward solving big problems but paper…

I did quantum computing research in university. We did meaningful work and published meaningful research.

Around 50% of our time was spent working in Overleaf making small improvements to old projects so that we could submit to some new journal or call-for-papers. We were always doing peer review or getting peer reviewed. We were working with a lot of 3rd-party tools (e.g. FPGAs, IBM Q, etc). And our team was constantly churning due to people getting their degrees and leaving, people getting too busy with coursework, and people deciding they just weren't interested anymore.

Compare that to the corporate labs: They have a fully proprietary ecosystem. The people who developed that ecosystem are often the ones doing research on/with it. They aren't taking time off of their ideas to handle peer-review processes. They aren't taking time off to handle unrelated coursework. Their researchers don't graduate and start looking for professor positions at other universities.

It's not surprising in the slightest that the corporate labs do better. They're more focused and better suited for long-term research.

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