Wait, is this another algorithm where they didn't bother even cursorily looking at the classical algorithm for even a minute, then compare it with their stuff? Last time they pulled this, it was my field, and I could only laugh. Just stop this nonsense and start doing some real work. Yeah, I know their "work" seems to be "how to extract money using buzzwords" but it's getting tiring, and I don't consider that "work".
Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
251–260 of 281 posts
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#252Until a company can demonstrate a quantum volume of even just 2^16... their computer is just about worthless for any sort of half-real quantum computing.
I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a quantum computing company until they demonstrate decent quantum volume.
Most companies computers can't even hit 2^16 so they are figuring out means of distracting the market from the poor fidelity of their systems.
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Idk. I get this is the median take across many comments, I don’t mean to be disagreeable with a crowd. But I don’t know why using quantum phenomena is a sign something’s off. It’s a quantum computer! But I know something is off with this take if it didn’t strike you that way.
To me, it matters because it's a sign that it might not be particularly transferable as a method of computation. A wind tunnel is a great tool for solving aerodynamics and fluid flow problems, more efficiently than a typical computer. But we don't call it a wind-computer, because it's not a useful tool outside of that narrow domain. The promise of quantum computing is that it can solve useful problems outside the qua…
I really like the wind tunnel example. That's a good way of explaining this to people.
I wonder whether discussions over quantum advantage would be clearer if we split it into two concepts: (i) algorithmic quantum advantage and (ii) physical quantum advantage? The former would be for quantum computers that are reconfigurable in some sense to implement algorithms.
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#254Until a company can demonstrate a quantum volume of even just 2^16... their computer is just about worthless for any sort of half-real quantum computing. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a quantum computing company until they demonstrate decent quantum volume. Most companies computers can't even hit 2^16 so they are figuring out means of distracting the market from the…
Until a company can demonstrate that a motor vehicle can be operated by a layperson, it's just about worthless for any sort of half-real transportation task.
I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a motor vehicle company until they demonstrate decent improvements in operating their machines.
Most companies' motor vehicles have to be hand cranked and kick-started by a youthful person with good vitality who doesn't fear being run over by their motor vehicle.
-- Some guy in 1925 who worked in the horse and buggy industry...
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
The quantum algorithm that would break certain kinds of public key cryptography schemes (not even the core part of Bitcoin blockchains, which are not vulnerable to quantum computers) will take days to weeks to break a single key [0]. This is another reason why we will have plenty of warning before quantum computing causes any major disruptions to daily life. What I would start worrying about is the security of things…
> not even the core part of Bitcoin blockchains, which are not vulnerable to quantum computers Um, what? Shor’s algorithm can take the public key of a wallet (present on any outgoing transaction in the ledger) and produce its private key. So now you can hijack any wallet that has transferred any Bitcoin. Notably only one successful run of the algorithm is needed per wallet, so you could just pick a big one if it take…
> public key of a wallet (present on any outgoing transaction in the ledger)
Genuine question: is this true? I only know a little bit about Bitcoin, but I thought there was a notion of an "extended public key" that's not exposed to the ledger, where each individual public key on the ledger is only used once, or something like that.
I'm not at all confident in my understanding, so I'd love if you or someone else knowledgeable could help fill in the gaps.
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#256Until a company can demonstrate a quantum volume of even just 2^16... their computer is just about worthless for any sort of half-real quantum computing. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a quantum computing company until they demonstrate decent quantum volume. Most companies computers can't even hit 2^16 so they are figuring out means of distracting the market from the…
Quantum volume is a good metric but that's kind of one-dimensional take. Almost any interesting circuit doesn't requires all-to-all connectivity and superconducting QC are bad at all-to-all connected circuit so we can have interesting NISQ experiments without particularly large QV
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#257Until a company can demonstrate a quantum volume of even just 2^16... their computer is just about worthless for any sort of half-real quantum computing. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a quantum computing company until they demonstrate decent quantum volume. Most companies computers can't even hit 2^16 so they are figuring out means of distracting the market from the…
Until a company can demonstrate that a motor vehicle can be operated by a layperson, it's just about worthless for any sort of half-real transportation task. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a motor vehicle company until they demonstrate decent improvements in operating their machines. Most companies' motor vehicles have to be hand cranked and kick-started by a youthfu…
The better analogy here, in my opinion, is until someone builds a car that actually drives forward...
A lot of these quantum computing papers are just loud engine rev'ing.
But you are right... "zero attention" is hyperbole... I shouldn't have said "I pay zero attention"... I should have said, "I am underwhelmed and don't give a lot of credence to systems until they demonstrate ability to perform high fidelity calculations of reasonable complexity and depth."
I do think superconducting qubits approaches will continue to improve in fidelity and ability... there are just too many brilliant people working on these challenges to count them out.
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#258Verification is about ergodicity that reflects very promising approach to error-correction. The concept of ergodicity is quite elegant and used in different physics domains. See recent paper regarding this, might be helpful to community to understand ergodicity.
Ergodicity detection algorithms: Scaling of ergodicity in random symbolic dynamics https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08319
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#259Until a company can demonstrate a quantum volume of even just 2^16... their computer is just about worthless for any sort of half-real quantum computing. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a quantum computing company until they demonstrate decent quantum volume. Most companies computers can't even hit 2^16 so they are figuring out means of distracting the market from the…
Quantum volume is a good metric but that's kind of one-dimensional take. Almost any interesting circuit doesn't requires all-to-all connectivity and superconducting QC are bad at all-to-all connected circuit so we can have interesting NISQ experiments without particularly large QV
It is not a one dimensional take... it is a stress test of qubit gate fidelity [across all qubits involved in the circuit], state prep and measurement , lifetime (coherence), memory errors, etc.
Now I agree that there are other great stress tests of quantum computer systems... but most of the industry agreed that quantum volume was a great metric several years ago. As many companies systems have been unable to hit decent QV, companies have pivoted away from QV to other metrics... many of them are half baloney.
Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quantum volume is a good metric but that's kind of one-dimensional take. Almost any interesting circuit doesn't requires all-to-all connectivity and superconducting QC are bad at all-to-all connected circuit so we can have interesting NISQ experiments without particularly large QV
It is not a one dimensional take... it is a stress test of qubit gate fidelity [across all qubits involved in the circuit], state prep and measurement , lifetime (coherence), memory errors, etc. Now I agree that there are other great stress tests of quantum computer systems... but most of the industry agreed that quantum volume was a great metric several years ago. As many companies systems have been unable to hit de…
> fidelity [across all qubits involved in the circuit]
I don't see a scenario in which the fidelity of 2QG between two far away qubits matter. Stress tests should be somehow related to the real tasks the system is intended to solve.
In case of quantum computers, the tasks are either NISQ circuits or fault-tolerant computation, and in both cases you can run them just fine without applying 2QG between far-away qubits that translate in large amount of swaps.
If you're interested in applying Haar-random unitaries, then surely QV is an amazing metric, and then systems with all-to-all connectivity is your best shot (coincidentally, Quantiniuum keeps publishing their quantum volume results). It's just not that interesting of a task.