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Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

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Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#41

Post by jasonthorsness »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #32
kantbtrue wrote: post #26

“13,000× faster” sounds huge, but I wonder what it’s being compared to. Quantum speedups are always tricky to measure

The article states: “...13,000 times faster on Willow than the best classical algorithm on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers...” I agree it's not very precise without knowing which of the world's fastest supercomputers they're talking about, but there was no need to leave out this tidbit.

The paper talks only about the Frontier supercomputer which is #2 on Top500. But I think it was an analysis rather than them actually running it.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#43

Post by kmeisthax »

I'll believe quantum computing exists when someone releases the factors of an RSA or DSA keypair with economic value, or at least a keypair not generated by the same people factoring it. Something like the code signing keys for Apple's boot ROM, or the root key of a well-trusted CA. It doesn't even have to be their current keys, it can be something older / shorter, as long as it's outside the time horizon of classical factoring.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#44

Post by jonathanstrange »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #41
jonathanstrange wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states: “...13,000 times faster on Willow than the best classical algorithm on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers...” I agree it's not very precise without knowing which of the world's fastest supercomputers they're talking about, but there was no need to leave out this tidbit.

The paper talks only about the Frontier supercomputer which is #2 on Top500. But I think it was an analysis rather than them actually running it.

I was being sarcastic because 13,000 times faster is 4 orders of magnitude faster so it doesn't matter to which supercomputer it is compared.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#45

Post by krastanov »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #15

the big problem with quantum advantage is that quantum computing is inherently error-prone and stochastic, but then they compare to classical methods that are exact let a classical computer use an error prone stochastic method and it still blows the doors off of qc this is a false comparison

Stochasticity (randomness) is pervasively used in classical algorithms that one compares to. That is nothing new and has always been part of comparisons.

"Error prone" hardware is not "a stochastic resource". Error prone hardware does not provide any value to computation.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#46

Post by reaperducer »

nashashmi wrote: post #10

Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect.

Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect.

I don't disagree, but these days I'm happy to see any advanced research at all.

Granted, too often I see the world through HN-colored glasses, but it seems like so many technological achievements are variations on getting people addicted to something in order to show them ads.

Did Bellcore or Xerox PARC do a lot of university partnerships? I was into other things in those days.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#47

Post by wcoenen »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #38
ransom1538 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SO... BTC goes to zero?

If quantum computers crack digital crytography, traditional bank account goes to zero too because regular 'ol databases also use crytography techniques for communication.

If all else fails, banks can generate terabytes of random one-time pad bytes, and then physically transport those on tape to other banks to set up provably secure communication channels that still go over the internet.

It would be a pain to manage but it would be safe from quantum computing.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#48

Post by Rebelgecko »

nashashmi wrote: post #10

Before the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect.

Funnily enough I remember reading a comment a week or two ago decrying the death of corporate research labs like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#49

Post by seanhunter »

jasonthorsness wrote: post #33

"surpassing even the fastest classical supercomputers (13,000x faster)" "Quantum verifiability means the result can be repeated on our quantum computer — or any other of the same caliber — to get the same answer, confirming the result." "The results on our quantum computer matched those of traditional NMR, and revealed information not usually available from NMR, which is a crucial validation of our approach." It cert…

I’ve only skimmed the paper but it seems like the “information not usually available” from NMR is the Jacobian and Hessian of the Hamiltonian of the system.

So basically you’re able to go directly from running the quantum experiment to being able to simulate the dynamics of the underlying system, because the Jacobian and Hessian are the first and second partial derivatives of the system with respect to all of its parameters in matrix form.

Re: Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware

#50

Post by ccppurcell »

i-con wrote: post #34

Notice how they say "quantum advantage" not "supremacy" and "a (big) step toward real-world applications". So actually just another step as always. And I'm left to doubt if the classic algorithm used for comparison was properly optimised.

I skimmed the paper so might have missed something, but iiuc there is no algorithm used for comparison. They did not run some well defined algorithm on some benchmark instances, they estimated the cost of simulating the circuits "through tensor network contraction" - I quote here not to scare but because this is where my expertise runs out.
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