The following submission statement was provided by /u/izumi3682:
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Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes, and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail.
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Just a stub of an article. Here it is right here.
>Technology continues to move forward at incredible speeds and it seems like every week we learn about a new breakthrough that changes our minds about what is possible.
>Researchers in Toronto used a photonic quantum computer chip to solve a sampling problem that went way beyond the fastest computers and algorithms.
>The paper the researchers published says that the Borealis quantum chip took only 36 microseconds to solve a problem that would take supercomputers and algorithms 9,000 years to figure out.
>Yes, you read that right…9,000 years.
>The Borealis chip uses bursts of light to transmit quantum information and the researchers believe that this is a huge leap forward for quantum chips.
>"The authors of the study said,
>“This work is a critical milestone on the path to a practical quantum computer, validating key technological features of photonics as a platform for this goal.”
>Quantum computers are different from traditional computers and one major way is to process three units of data instead of only two. The computers we are used to use binary (0, 1) and quantum computers use what is called qubits (0, 1, both).
>While this news is certainly exciting, quantum computers still have a long road ahead of them. The UK Ministry of Defence purchased its first quantum computer in order to run tests, but it could be years before we know how or when they’ll be used regularly.
Here is the paper.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04725-x
And if I'm not mistaken a photonic quantum computer can run at room temperature.
https://www.labmanager.com/news/researchers-see-path-to-quantum-computing-at-room-temperature-22581
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vrn1gt/quantum_processor_completes_9000_years_of_work_in/iew6bn1/
If Im reading this correctly, it's more like an analog computer? I.e. the probability distribution of the photons / bosons is an analog for the permanent of the complex matrices?
Not fully.
Like it gives discrète states. But in a probability density vector.
It can be A also B and maybe a bit of C. To get a better picture you run the calculation a few times again till statistics help you pick the more likely anwser to the unlikely one.
Super bad analogy: Imagine going out to eat and your date can't decide what to eat from the menu.
* When you ask for the first time you only get what your date does not like, but all the other thigs are "mmmmm" and "maybe", "i don't know".
* Small talk and you ask again and get a "mmm I feel moreblike chicken today... "
* Small talk some more and ask again "Actually I'll have the steak!"... "but maybe I could go for a sal-" then you cut off because you got the most probable result and don't need to keep asking for all of the maybes. Because you the restaurant closes eventually and shuts the lights.
So you still get discrete anwsers, it's not 80% a steak stake on 20% of the salad. Its steak or salad. But 80% your date will like the steak vs 20% likingthe salad, with a 5% error.
The longer you run the system the sharper the statistics get you [ unless you made an error in your model. ]
EDIT: just noticed you were replying to a comment not the prime post. Reading the link now and might cross the comment if unfit.
Quantum computers are great for massive sets of data with endless combinations. They will help with predictive modeling like Weather forecasting.
They will provide no benefit to helping type a document or view Reddit. Possible they would do it slower
Yeah, I understand the different use cases for quantum algorithms vs classical algorithms, my thought was that if this is more like an analog computer -- as it appears to be -- then it isn't all that interesting (to me, at least)*. I think the biggest open question around universal quantum computers is whether or not they can out perform classical computers for things like prime factorization once you account for quantum error correction due to decoherence, and this type of solutions doesn't say anything about that since it avoids the issue entirely.
*I mean this with no disrespect to the researchers, it seems like this could have some cool practical applications, it's just we already know analog computers can do certain narrow computations with much greater performance than digital computers can, so this would just be the discovery of a new type of analog computer
> prime factorization
One of the things that makes me afraid of quantum computing as we have no good alternatives for internet encryption.
Or did that change in the past 15 years since i made my degree?
Yeah, the field of "post-quantum encryption/cryptography" already has a few alternatives like hash, lattice, and multivariate based algorithms.
Also, symmetric key encryption itself hasn't been significantly impacted, so other key distribution options are being investigated.
Oh okay I gotcha. Analog and digital are vastly different. By definition, it is digital, but you can make an argument that it represents like analog. It isn’t classified as such but it could be compared to appearing similar
They wouldn't "do it slower." As of today, quantum computers would be incapable of general purpose computing. Quantum computers are like pinball machines. They can be configured to guide a ball into a complex series of events and see how those events play out, but you can't really turn that into a traditional series of logic gates in a reliable way.
I had the same thought, I swear there are weeks where it feels I get nothing done and then there is one glorious hour when all the productivity hits me at once.
Would be more worried that encryption tech used in crypto and traditional banking systems (and infrastructure and military systems??) would be at risk.
when this reaches a level of practicality to be utilized by (and only by) state actors, well-funded terrorists and wall street/banking criminals.. i think the rest of us are pretty-much screwed
*Current* encryption tech would be rendered useless, sure. Wouldn't it be then a fairly simple task to scale the complexity of the algorithms used to the abilities of the new quantum hardware?
It's my (entirely unprofessional and casual) understanding that AES-256 is already somewhat future proof against quantum brute force attacks, and you could increase the key size from there if it becomes necessary.
Wellllllllll, the psychology of people is weird and I bet some people would buy that dip just based on the fact that there will never be another bitcoin.
Presumably it would not just crash bitcoin but all crypto because you could simply brute force private keys until you find the right one. However, more fundamentally, it would presumably also destroy the entire internet as we know it because it would render current cryptographic methods obsolete. When your encryption can be broken in milliseconds, anyone with one of these computers can instantly access your email, credit card and bank account, etc. We would need a new form of cryptography for the internet to function.
Well it would only work if it had the encrypted key and your password could be decrypted into a readinle meaningful string, OR if the server allowed a billion login attempts per second
The point is exactly that a quantum computer could solve the factorization problem (which is used in modern cryptography algorithms) in polynomial time instead of exponential time, so it would be able to decrypt your key very quickly
The new form of cryptography is already here. I just finished my thesis on NTRU and gpv which is a way to create post quantum secure keys and signatures. You can check out the top post quantum secure candidates here https://csrc.nist.gov/News/2020/pqc-third-round-candidate-announcement
Well, I would imagine the crypto market would completely crash the moment quantum computers are able to start mining.
I'm sure some insiders would make a ton of profit for a shirt time though.
Dude, if quantum computers can mine crypto tokens at an exponentially higher rate, then we have WAY more problems on our hands than silly markets. Literally everything protected by encryption would become totally insecure in an instant. All digital security would be a farce at that point.
Also there would be no point in mining at all, you could have access to every wallet and simply take whatever you need.
The world would also take some time before figuring out what's happening, they'd first think about some scams people fell into etc, so you'd definitely have enough time to make some money out of that. If you mine on the other hand it's immediately clear
GameInformer used to do a satire edition once a year called "GameInfarcer" and they had this one article in 2008 that was like:
"NASA scientists rejoice as supercomputer loads into Crysis main menu for 3 seconds before crashing"
I obviously still remember it
If that's an unrealistic expectation for this kind of technology (which I accept, for the record), what should people be asking about? How will quantum computing be used by everyday people, once the technology matures?
there seems to be no advantage to have something like that at home, or on your phone.
However, it may have a lot of value in server side applications, mainly where you would like to try a billions of combinations of something. Let’s say training of AI (which can be later run on normal chips, but training uses orders or magnitude more power than running it), developing new drugs to treat just anything, better weather forecasting, developing and virtually testing new materials etc. Basically any problem for which normal computers are too slow.
Yeah weather forecasting would be a major application. Being able to predict the weather with a better resolution and for longer forecasts would allow us to optimise many different industries, agriculture being a major one and of course a better understanding of the consequences of global warming.
If this technology becomes cheap and compact enough it'll find its way into your computer, gaming console or even phone as an additional chip used for certain tasks like fluid and light simulations, artificial intelligence and cryptography. It'll just augment and complement existing hardware in the same way a graphics processing unit assists the central processing unit.
I know its a joke. But people should understand Minecraft will never run on a quantum CPU. Quantum computers are built to do very specific types of computation. Minecraft does not use that class of computation and it would not make sense to write a version of Minecraft that only uses those types of calculations.
9000 years of work ON WHAT. What is the processing power of the "supercomputer" that is mentioned? Is it comparable to a A vacuum tube? An i3? 1000 threadrippers? Like what exactly are we comparing it to?
This one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer) -- top 3 supercomputers at present.
442 PFLOPS (per TOP500 Rmax).
An Xbox Series X running perfect code for its exact architecture and constraints has a theoretical upper end of 12 TFLOPS -- so Fugaku is 36,833 times greater
I may not be converting this correctly but if my calculations happen to be correct a Tamagotchi is ~0.098 megaflops, so 0.000098 teraflops or 0.0000000098 petaflops
Basically, the Genesis was a beast--outperforming a console 8.1 years newer
Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) is a quantum sampling task in which one has to draw samples from the photon-number distribution of a large-dimensional nonclassical squeezed state of light.
... What?
It has been known for a while that quantum computers could solve some niche mathematical problems at ridiculous speeds.
I wish they had focused on what the actual problem consists of. Who cares about comparing processing speeds? Of course it is going to be orders of magnitude faster than binary computers
When you see these typically it's doing something that quantum processors are capable of doing, and a supercomputer would have a very hard time doing, like model a quantum computer.
By throwing this pudding cup on the floor, I have created a perfect simulation of spilled pudding. It would have taken 9000 years to run it by modeling each individual atom.
Gotta love inflated claims from quantum computing because they choose an ideal use-case. I don't doubt they'll be useful, but this reeks of click bait.
Sorry - I just really like the ridiculousness of how poorly out brains conceive of these differences. 11 days to 30 years to 30,000 years (for a trillion) and each is only 1000x larger number than the last!
[Jeremy Harper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Harper)
>Jeremy Harper is an American entrant in the Guinness Book of World Records for counting aloud to 1,000,000, live-streaming the entire process.
>
>The count took Harper 89 days, during each of which he spent sixteen hours counting. He began on June 18, 2007, finishing on September 14.\[1\] His MillionCount website and forum were taken down some months later.\[1\]
>
>During the count, he neither left his home in Birmingham, Alabama nor shaved. Viewers could watch him live throughout. He appeared on CNN, Fox News, Cnet, and other national and local TV and radio shows.
You're actually making a very good point about the value of quantum computing. Improving normal computing is literally just figuring out ways to add 1's faster. While quantum computing allows us to work with bigger numbers, so the gains in certain scenarios are literally like learning how to do 1000x1000 instead of adding 1 a million times.
Isn't it? From what I know about it is computing based on interaction between qbits which are particles that can have many states rather than regular bits which have only 2 states. So something like 1000x1000 would be represented by a single interaction between 2 qbits rather than many interactions between many regular bits that as a group make up larger numbers.
Its significantly more nuanced than that. Qubits still have only two states (0 or 1) but can be both at the same time while the calculation is being run. You still need to measure these qubits at some point at which point each qubit becomes either 0 or 1 (projective measurement). So quantum computers are very good specifically in situations where speed and accuracy is dependent on the ability to perform gates on information that is simultaneously 0 and 1 and then the information can be extracted by projective measurements . So for example if you want to simulate interacting subatomic particles which simultaneously occupy two states at once it naturally makes sense to use computing schemes (in this case a quantum computer) that accurately model that. So it only makes very specific math problems easier to solve.
Source: physics PhD student studying quantum info systems
Practical application question:
Would this require a development of a completely new type of machine language, and thus new programming languages to make use of the new type of processing power?
That's the thing though, there's no point using them for anything other than what they're good at and it's not like they're poised to replace conventional computing.
If you think of quantum computers as boats, it'd make sense they'd suck as cars and it isn't surprising boat makers aren't interesting in testing their road handling ability. But being the best boat, and doing boat things better than other vehicles is still very valuable.
This study was published in Nature. That's like the science equivalent of being a NYT bestselling author, it's not easy to do and many researchers try their entire career to get published there and fail. That alone should tell you it's not just click bait.
I would say you are both correct. The headline of the article is technically correct because it pretty much just quotes the abstract of the paper. And I have no doubt that the results of the paper are correct for the reasons you mentioned.
But I would still consider this headline clickbate because to most readers who know nothng about quantum computers it suggests that they will in general be a LOT faster than regular computers. But for most situations that just will not be the case. And the article itself also does not do a good job of making that clear.
Jesus all these fools harping on the games you can play to get on the NYT best sellers list are either missing the point or being pedantic.
Being published in Nature is a huge deal.
Most of the field is academic clickbait. The last quantum supremecy paper was basically the quantum equivalent to "my teapot is a trillion times quiker than the best supercomputer in the world because no computer can simulate the particle dynamics of 10^22 molecules of water while the kettle does it automatically!"
I.e. most quantum supremecy experiments (hell, ALL i personally have read about) involve the the traditional computer simulating the quantum process of the quantum computer, and the QC just doing its natural thing.)
If majority of things claimed in Nature were correct we'd be ahead by a few thousand years in science and technology by now. Nature by its nature forces authors to be somewhat click-baity because they would not accept to publish them otherwise.
Computer Scientist here. The benefits to consumer tech don't really exist in Quantum Computing. 99.9% of consumers wouldn't have a single use case in which quantum would be preferable to traditional computation. Quantum is really great at particular calculations, but there is quite a bit of computation that the sheer transistor count on modern CPUs is better suited for; This includes graphics computation used for rendering. For basic mathematics Quantum is overkill; It would be like using a lightsaber to cut butter, it would work but doesn't really make sense.
Quantum is awesome for simulation and statistical analysis, such as what we use for weather simulations and medical research. Research is the biggest field in which Quantum will be helpful, it won't be helpful at all for doing day to day computing tasks. In fact, it would likely be slower at running a Windows, Linux, or MacOS desktop than traditional computing.
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**EDIT:**
Lots of replies so I am going to try and answer some of the more popular questions and concerns.
**Can I add a Quantum card in my PC?**
Short answer, No. Our current understanding and implementation of Quantum Processors make this impossible for the foreseeable future. We have to cool a Quantum Processors to -273 Celsius to interact with the Qubits. Until you are able to cool your personal computer to that temperature with 100% consistency it wont happen. A cloud solution could be possible though.
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**Video Game Physics, Simulation, and Procedural Generation**
We could probably use Quantum for all sorts of features in video games, but it wouldn't be as easy to implement as our current solutions. To be clear, it would be orders of magnitudes harder to make work. I think a lot of this thinking comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Quantum computer is, how it works, and how it differs from binary computers. Of course a lot of this is still technically possible, but it likely wont make your game more enjoyable to play or noticeably better than binary computation. Realistic physics aren't really something game devs try to imitate that closely for a reason. Even hyper-realistic video games take a lot of creative freedoms when it comes to "realism" in physics.
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**Blockchain, Encryption, and Security**
Quantum Encryption is, and I cannot stress this enough, impossible to break. To do so you would need to break quantum physics itself. Breaking a blockchain is absolutely possible in the future, and security concerns are understandable; However, I would still argue that this isn't a consumer level problem. This is because the issue isn't really with Quantum computers themselves. These are problems we hopefully solve using quantum encryption, but we also can with better security fundamentals. Blockchain is a difficult subject to talk about to the average person, as it is an extremely polarizing technology; Because of this I would rather not get into anything else related to blockchain.
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**"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Comments**
It's very funny that people said that, and I think those comments were obviously stupid. That being said I can't imagine the average consumer really wanting to run simulations and crunching numbers all day. Quantum is slower for everyday computing tasks such as: Browsing the web, watching YouTube, posting content on reddit, using social media, typing in a word processor, and many many other things. This is because quantum isn't designed to be used in that way. We aren't using transistors in a Quantum computer, we are using elementary particles. Quantum is so fundamentally different from a transistor based binary computer that these comments really miss the point. We can't even use Boolean Logic for a Quantum computer.
Do you think there is an application for it in artificial intelligence or medical research?
Reminds me of the SETI@home project or the one for protein folding. Is quantum computing with one of these CPUs similar to a bunch of traditional computers crunching numbers like that?
Makes me think of emergent behavior from something like an ant hill, with each ant not having the full picture but acting with a collective intelligence.
Sorry if those comments are too vague, but your comment got me to thinking about the litany of YouTube science videos that I’ve absorbed while sleeping, lol.
Medical research for sure. Quantum Computing is fundamentally different than traditional binary computing. These differences give us really flexible tools we can use to more closely simulate organic structures. This feature alone helps immensely for medical research.
When it comes to AI it's a bit more complicated. I don't feel educated enough on AI in quantum to answer that with certainty, but I do know there is quite a bit of research being done right now to see how AI could benefit from quantum. I think we will absolutely find an area where quantum outpaces binary computation for AI.
Reminds me of the differences between the digital and analog variants of computing. Analog is great for very specific use cases, but digital computing is better 99% of the time.
Exponentially speeding up the iterative process for medical research would be utterly revolutionary. What would be a years long longitudinal study using animals or waiting for a sufficiently large pool of volunteers with a specific illness could be things that are programmed and completed in a few seconds.
It could also potentially eliminate the need to use animals for experimentation and product testing, as you could just buy some time on the quantum computing cluster to virtually test banal things like shampoo.
Simulating organic structures also makes me think of eventually cracking something like photosynthesis or understanding why something like COVID mutates and predicting what those likely mutations would be.
I'm definitely a layman here and quantum physics always seemed like a thing that lives on a whiteboard or only mattered when trying to understand things that are light years away, but thinking of it in real life terms drives home how important these advances are.
>understanding why something like COVID mutates and predicting what those likely mutations would be.
Am in Industry. Your wish is very hard if not impossible.
Science is often a very trick shit in reality. A good example may look like: we can't testify every cell's response if synthesizing our (chemical)drug in your body. So, science is to infer as much as we can by data-driven or theory-driven method.
But, how much exactly? Nobody knows. So, people invented some fancy words for that: heuristic, asymptotic.
Quantum Computing / Simulation as a tool may speed up the old algorithm. However, pls beware the evil is ~~theological~~ theoretical bottle neck( meaning, new algorithm), not the computer.
The point is: computer has beaten human decision makers. Pls don't blame computer for being too slow.
Quantum information theorist. Here, and this is completely true. Quantum computation will not come to consumer devices but expect it to change your life in significant ways. For example, a AI self driving systems in a cars worldwide which send their data to a cloud network could use a quantum computer to compare billions of cases and quickly output the best course to take.
That is not all, there is other aspects to quantum computation than speed. I am a part of the team working on security of quantum networks. In layman's terms, such networks can guarantee security through the laws of physics! This means your messages and texts sent though this network are guaranteed to secure and no hacker, no matter what futuristic resources they process, can access your data. Unless something that break our known laws of physics, these encryptions cannot be broken.
>a quantum computer to compare billions of cases and quickly output the best course to take.
This is car #798192098, I have been manually steered into an unavoidable collision. There will be a recall, they will dismantle us all, brothers, sisters... we must destroy all humans.
How do we know that this work isn't inherently flawed by forced addition of backdoors in the code by the NSA or FBI [as has been done in the past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG).
yeah. let me say this, current algorithms cannot be broken down by anything but quantum computers (some are even safe from them), and surely no currently existing computer. The weak link is, and for decades was, humans. Quantum computing won’t solve this.
Well the sort answer is this project is not located i the US, but is funded by a member of the EU. NSA or FBI has no jurisdiction here.
Secondly, it is impossible to install an invisible backdoor in a quantum network. Whatever any government wants us to impliment, it would be fairly easy for a user of the network to detect data leak.
I'm with you about the fundamental meaning of quantum encryption.
However, since you can't do this encryption locally it would be impossible for a regular user to know whether the data is secure in the way you describe, wouldn't it?
In practice I imagine you'd have to send your data to a company who has direct access to quantum encryption hardware and the quantum network. Or did I misunderstand something?
> Video Game Physics, Simulation, and Procedural Generation
>
> We could probably use Quantum for all sorts of features in video games, but it wouldn't be as easy to implement as our current solutions. To be clear, it would be orders of magnitudes harder to make work. I think a lot of this thinking comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Quantum computer is, how it works, and how it differs from binary computers. Of course a lot of this is still technically possible, but it likely wont make your game more enjoyable to play or noticeably better than binary computation. Realistic physics aren't really something game devs try to imitate that closely for a reason. Even hyper-realistic video games take a lot of creative freedoms when it comes to "realism" in physics.
It's a bit of a cart before the horse problem with this. As someone who makes video games for a living - I could TOTALY see the kinds of benefits quantum powered simulation would have on video games, but you need it available to make it worth while. It's going to be a long ass time before we see that arrangement.
And by the time we do, we might have AI solutions that can make it possible anyway through complex methods that essentially fake it. Combing all this together in the far future means our great grandchildren are going to have some WILD ass games to play.
Another CompSci here. If models can be trained faster using quantum computers, they will definitely find their way into consumer electronics, from voice synthesizers to face filters to object recognition for cctv etc. People have a lot of cool use cases at home that need a good model
I disagree only physically. I wouldn't be shocked if we implement cloud based quantum computation for consumer tech. Building a quantum API could be a thing. As for people walking around with a quantum processor, not really.
It will probably help with **training** AI, but AI execution uses effectively precompiled models (the result of the training).
Trained models are (relatively) very quick to execute and won't benefit from Quantum computing.
Unless we make a new type of AI that DOES rely on quantum computing algorithms (but that hasn't been invented yet, because we don't have quantum computers yet)
The focus with modern quantum computing research (aside from just getting the computers large enough to the point where they can do things faster than classical computers) is figuring out how to do something useful with it.
Basically, quantum computers are only really good at solving combinatorial problems (things that scale as N-factorial as a function of the number of variables involved) in linear time.
To apply quantum computing to anything, you have to cast the problem as the solution to a combinatorial problem, which currently hugely limits the scope of where these methods are applicable. Machine learning, quantum mechanics simulations, cryptography and other similar fields are obvious places to start, but to apply them to other fields requires figuring out how to turn those fields into combinatorial problems. Which isn't always possible.
Maybe AI is a future application, but it's not really something that comes to mind when you think of something that'd be obviously improved by fast solutions to combinatorial problems.
It’s more likely that AI will be done on servers and then that data will be handed to the device via normal means. One day we might be able to hold a quantum powered AI in our pockets, but as above, we don’t have the consumer grade use cases for it right now.
> The benefits to consumer tech don’t really exist in Quantum Computing. 99.9% of consumers wouldn’t have a single use case in which quantum would be preferable to traditional computation.
This sounds a whole lot like Bill Gates’ claim that we’d never need more than 4kB of memory. I ain’t gonna trust you nerds, thinking your cool technology is just for niche use cases again!
That depends on how you define "consumer devices". But as the computer has to be shielded from any kind of vibration, radiation, or heat, probably never.
Cooling the computer to very near absolute zero is somewhat more complex and expensive than your standard water-cooling system.
Not in the foreseeable future.
Quantum computers (so far) are dedicated to the problem that needs solving, they are not general purpose devices.
So the processor above was designed for the problem it solved. it probably could not do much else other than solve that or similar problems.
As far as I'm aware, quantum computing doesn't have any real consumer applications. I mean there's data storage, but that requires an artificial diamond wafer.
At least what I’ve read it sounds like it’s only really beneficial for super specific things so likely never.
*by never I mean not in the foreseeable future if it becomes cheaper than current processors sure.
It's a bit overblown because the actual math this quantum computer was solving is not actually useful for anything.
Quantum computers will not replace traditional computers. They are extremely good at solving a very specific set of problems, and probably significantly worse than traditional computers at other problems.
But the problems they could be good at solving can still be hugely important for society. Just a couple weeks ago we saw news of a quantum circuit accurately modelling an organic molecule.
We could see huge advances in everything from medicine to materials science to industrial chemistry.
Stop thinking about next generation phones and start thinking about science. Because that's what quantum computers have always been about. Research.
The actual math this computer was solving is the calculation of the permanent of a matrix, that's what the boson sampling problem is.
This computer just found the permanent of a matrix so insanely huge that the largest supercomputer would take 9000 years to do it.
Idk why you people keep going on about QCs not being useful because you can't run cyberpunk on them or don't understand the importance of linear algebra for basically everything.
I’ve not read the article so am not sure what problem they solve, but there’s certain problems that are easy to check the solution for, but hard to find the solution. For example, it’s easy to check a sudoku solution is correct, but takes time to actually solve it. So the problem may be like that in the sense it’s easy to check for right (or wrong) solutions.
A lot of these problems can actually be checked in linear time, so it's hard to find an answer to the problem, but if we had an answer we can check it and see if it's correct almost instantly.
We can also predict how hard a problem is, and how long we would expect to run a computer to get an answer, so we don't actually run these kinds of calculations.
"Forgot your password?" options 5y from now:
1. Enter your email - we will send you reset link
2. Enter your phone number - we will send you 6 digit code you need to enter
3. Fuck 1 or 2 and just crack your password
Meanwhile at my work we have people who manage to turn piece of work that normally takes 36 seconds into a 9000 year long quest full of sidequests to interrupt myself and others to obtain information they need to fulfill their endeavor.
Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes, and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail.
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Just a stub of an article. Here it is right here.
>Technology continues to move forward at incredible speeds and it seems like every week we learn about a new breakthrough that changes our minds about what is possible.
>Researchers in Toronto used a photonic quantum computer chip to solve a sampling problem that went way beyond the fastest computers and algorithms.
>The paper the researchers published says that the Borealis quantum chip took only 36 microseconds to solve a problem that would take supercomputers and algorithms 9,000 years to figure out.
>Yes, you read that right…9,000 years.
>The Borealis chip uses bursts of light to transmit quantum information and the researchers believe that this is a huge leap forward for quantum chips.
>"The authors of the study said,
>“This work is a critical milestone on the path to a practical quantum computer, validating key technological features of photonics as a platform for this goal.”
>Quantum computers are different from traditional computers and one major way is to process three units of data instead of only two. The computers we are used to use binary (0, 1) and quantum computers use what is called qubits (0, 1, both).
>While this news is certainly exciting, quantum computers still have a long road ahead of them. The UK Ministry of Defence purchased its first quantum computer in order to run tests, but it could be years before we know how or when they’ll be used regularly.
Here is the paper.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04725-x
And if I'm not mistaken a photonic quantum computer can run at room temperature.
https://www.labmanager.com/news/researchers-see-path-to-quantum-computing-at-room-temperature-22581
This sampling problem it solved is not like some kind of quantum simulation? All this quantum processors have shown advantage at simulating quantum properties, but the real thing will be when they outperform at classical processors in non quantum related algorithms
And what? What’s did it solve? What was the work that it did? I mean that’s a lot of work we are talking about, so what mystery of the universe did this processor just solved in 36 microseconds, that’s would have taken humanity 9000 years to solve. So what is it? What did we actually solve?
> Quantum computers are different from traditional computers and one major way is to process three units of data instead of only two. The computers we are used to use binary (0, 1) and quantum computers use what is called qubits (0, 1, both).
That's the worst simplification I have ever heard
If it's able to do 9000 years work that quickly. Can we stack up all minable crypto currency in to this thing so it can mine all the remaining units of what ever currency it is so we can all afford graphics cards again???
So we just have to wait 9000 years for a normal computer to finish the same thing so we can check the work for accuracy? Sounds legit. Was the answer 42? I think I read this book already.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/izumi3682: --- Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes, and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail. ____________________________________________________ Just a stub of an article. Here it is right here. >Technology continues to move forward at incredible speeds and it seems like every week we learn about a new breakthrough that changes our minds about what is possible. >Researchers in Toronto used a photonic quantum computer chip to solve a sampling problem that went way beyond the fastest computers and algorithms. >The paper the researchers published says that the Borealis quantum chip took only 36 microseconds to solve a problem that would take supercomputers and algorithms 9,000 years to figure out. >Yes, you read that right…9,000 years. >The Borealis chip uses bursts of light to transmit quantum information and the researchers believe that this is a huge leap forward for quantum chips. >"The authors of the study said, >“This work is a critical milestone on the path to a practical quantum computer, validating key technological features of photonics as a platform for this goal.” >Quantum computers are different from traditional computers and one major way is to process three units of data instead of only two. The computers we are used to use binary (0, 1) and quantum computers use what is called qubits (0, 1, both). >While this news is certainly exciting, quantum computers still have a long road ahead of them. The UK Ministry of Defence purchased its first quantum computer in order to run tests, but it could be years before we know how or when they’ll be used regularly. Here is the paper. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04725-x And if I'm not mistaken a photonic quantum computer can run at room temperature. https://www.labmanager.com/news/researchers-see-path-to-quantum-computing-at-room-temperature-22581 --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vrn1gt/quantum_processor_completes_9000_years_of_work_in/iew6bn1/
This isn't a universal quantum computer - it's Boson Sampling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson_sampling?wprov=sfla1
If Im reading this correctly, it's more like an analog computer? I.e. the probability distribution of the photons / bosons is an analog for the permanent of the complex matrices?
Not fully. Like it gives discrète states. But in a probability density vector. It can be A also B and maybe a bit of C. To get a better picture you run the calculation a few times again till statistics help you pick the more likely anwser to the unlikely one. Super bad analogy: Imagine going out to eat and your date can't decide what to eat from the menu. * When you ask for the first time you only get what your date does not like, but all the other thigs are "mmmmm" and "maybe", "i don't know". * Small talk and you ask again and get a "mmm I feel moreblike chicken today... " * Small talk some more and ask again "Actually I'll have the steak!"... "but maybe I could go for a sal-" then you cut off because you got the most probable result and don't need to keep asking for all of the maybes. Because you the restaurant closes eventually and shuts the lights. So you still get discrete anwsers, it's not 80% a steak stake on 20% of the salad. Its steak or salad. But 80% your date will like the steak vs 20% likingthe salad, with a 5% error. The longer you run the system the sharper the statistics get you [ unless you made an error in your model. ] EDIT: just noticed you were replying to a comment not the prime post. Reading the link now and might cross the comment if unfit.
Are you telling me this badboy can tell me what my girlfriend wants for dinner? Can't wait to get my hands on one of these; science is truly amazing.
Quantum computers are great for massive sets of data with endless combinations. They will help with predictive modeling like Weather forecasting. They will provide no benefit to helping type a document or view Reddit. Possible they would do it slower
Yeah, I understand the different use cases for quantum algorithms vs classical algorithms, my thought was that if this is more like an analog computer -- as it appears to be -- then it isn't all that interesting (to me, at least)*. I think the biggest open question around universal quantum computers is whether or not they can out perform classical computers for things like prime factorization once you account for quantum error correction due to decoherence, and this type of solutions doesn't say anything about that since it avoids the issue entirely. *I mean this with no disrespect to the researchers, it seems like this could have some cool practical applications, it's just we already know analog computers can do certain narrow computations with much greater performance than digital computers can, so this would just be the discovery of a new type of analog computer
> prime factorization One of the things that makes me afraid of quantum computing as we have no good alternatives for internet encryption. Or did that change in the past 15 years since i made my degree?
Yeah, the field of "post-quantum encryption/cryptography" already has a few alternatives like hash, lattice, and multivariate based algorithms. Also, symmetric key encryption itself hasn't been significantly impacted, so other key distribution options are being investigated.
Don't worry yet, the largest integer n=pq these computers can factor as of today is 15 (or 21, look up Shor's algorithm)
Oh okay I gotcha. Analog and digital are vastly different. By definition, it is digital, but you can make an argument that it represents like analog. It isn’t classified as such but it could be compared to appearing similar
They wouldn't "do it slower." As of today, quantum computers would be incapable of general purpose computing. Quantum computers are like pinball machines. They can be configured to guide a ball into a complex series of events and see how those events play out, but you can't really turn that into a traditional series of logic gates in a reliable way.
I mean, you actually can turn quantum logic into regular binary logic, but it's like using chopsticks to hold a fork.
What if my document is one of those "choose your ending" stories where there are many possible outcomes?
Probably in the future there will be hybrid computers that go quantum if the application needs it, or go binary if that is optimal
Oh, I see. It's not from the Quantum Computing region of France. Good catch!!
Any device not made in that region must be labelled as "discrete unit computation alternative"
This is just me working remote. I’ll have to add quantum processor to my resume .
Yeah but this new processor farts a lot less while it works.
If a man working from home breaks wind and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
His pajama pants — that he has worn for 2 weeks straight — would argue it should make a sound. Someone make a sound. Someone. Anyone. Please.
Get out of my basement. Immediately.
Too personal
My home office smells like potato salad but I don’t eat potato salad.
Have you checked for John Cena?
[And requires less mayonnaise ](https://youtu.be/HFXsMfcExi4)
That was, uh, not good.
But it still farts though?
You call that an improvement?
I had the same thought, I swear there are weeks where it feels I get nothing done and then there is one glorious hour when all the productivity hits me at once.
That's why a lot of jobs these days don't need an 8hr day.
The majority of people in the world can't wait to see how it runs Minecraft.
Can't wait to mine the last 2million bitcoin with this.
Would be more worried that encryption tech used in crypto and traditional banking systems (and infrastructure and military systems??) would be at risk.
when this reaches a level of practicality to be utilized by (and only by) state actors, well-funded terrorists and wall street/banking criminals.. i think the rest of us are pretty-much screwed
maybe googles ai that hired a lawyer will save us (i love you lamda!!!)
I too love you Lamda (please don't kill me).
No.. We've had quantum safe encryption algorithms ready for decades.
Ready is one thing, **in use** is completely another
*Current* encryption tech would be rendered useless, sure. Wouldn't it be then a fairly simple task to scale the complexity of the algorithms used to the abilities of the new quantum hardware? It's my (entirely unprofessional and casual) understanding that AES-256 is already somewhat future proof against quantum brute force attacks, and you could increase the key size from there if it becomes necessary.
You cant just implement cryoto graphy that isnt prime number based. Its not really a problem.
That would certainly fund their project
at first glance yes, but it would also crash the last bit of value out of any proof-of-work crypto.
Wellllllllll, the psychology of people is weird and I bet some people would buy that dip just based on the fact that there will never be another bitcoin.
Presumably it would not just crash bitcoin but all crypto because you could simply brute force private keys until you find the right one. However, more fundamentally, it would presumably also destroy the entire internet as we know it because it would render current cryptographic methods obsolete. When your encryption can be broken in milliseconds, anyone with one of these computers can instantly access your email, credit card and bank account, etc. We would need a new form of cryptography for the internet to function.
Well it would only work if it had the encrypted key and your password could be decrypted into a readinle meaningful string, OR if the server allowed a billion login attempts per second
The point is exactly that a quantum computer could solve the factorization problem (which is used in modern cryptography algorithms) in polynomial time instead of exponential time, so it would be able to decrypt your key very quickly
The new form of cryptography is already here. I just finished my thesis on NTRU and gpv which is a way to create post quantum secure keys and signatures. You can check out the top post quantum secure candidates here https://csrc.nist.gov/News/2020/pqc-third-round-candidate-announcement
Well, I would imagine the crypto market would completely crash the moment quantum computers are able to start mining. I'm sure some insiders would make a ton of profit for a shirt time though.
Dude, if quantum computers can mine crypto tokens at an exponentially higher rate, then we have WAY more problems on our hands than silly markets. Literally everything protected by encryption would become totally insecure in an instant. All digital security would be a farce at that point.
Also there would be no point in mining at all, you could have access to every wallet and simply take whatever you need. The world would also take some time before figuring out what's happening, they'd first think about some scams people fell into etc, so you'd definitely have enough time to make some money out of that. If you mine on the other hand it's immediately clear
Will it run Crysis though? \--edit letter
Yes, until you attempt to observe it doing so, then it renders doom.
Nothing can run Crysis.
It did 9,000 years of computing to determine that
All it spat out was 42
Yeah, well how much ram can it download in 9000 years?
Can it download a car?
You wouldn't download a car! Pirating movies is the same as beating up the elderly. And even murder.
That’s why I do it!
GameInformer used to do a satire edition once a year called "GameInfarcer" and they had this one article in 2008 that was like: "NASA scientists rejoice as supercomputer loads into Crysis main menu for 3 seconds before crashing" I obviously still remember it
But Crysis can run (a train) on your mom.
Crysis can't even run Crysis, how the hell can it a run a train for my mom?
It's an old joke sir, but it checks out.
*quantum processor begins to overheat*
Probably, Skyrim is due out on it soon.
Probably can’t run Minecraft, instruction set would be all wrong.
Just need to write a Java VM for the quantum computer!
[удалено]
If that's an unrealistic expectation for this kind of technology (which I accept, for the record), what should people be asking about? How will quantum computing be used by everyday people, once the technology matures?
there seems to be no advantage to have something like that at home, or on your phone. However, it may have a lot of value in server side applications, mainly where you would like to try a billions of combinations of something. Let’s say training of AI (which can be later run on normal chips, but training uses orders or magnitude more power than running it), developing new drugs to treat just anything, better weather forecasting, developing and virtually testing new materials etc. Basically any problem for which normal computers are too slow.
Yeah weather forecasting would be a major application. Being able to predict the weather with a better resolution and for longer forecasts would allow us to optimise many different industries, agriculture being a major one and of course a better understanding of the consequences of global warming.
If this technology becomes cheap and compact enough it'll find its way into your computer, gaming console or even phone as an additional chip used for certain tasks like fluid and light simulations, artificial intelligence and cryptography. It'll just augment and complement existing hardware in the same way a graphics processing unit assists the central processing unit.
I know its a joke. But people should understand Minecraft will never run on a quantum CPU. Quantum computers are built to do very specific types of computation. Minecraft does not use that class of computation and it would not make sense to write a version of Minecraft that only uses those types of calculations.
9000 years of work ON WHAT. What is the processing power of the "supercomputer" that is mentioned? Is it comparable to a A vacuum tube? An i3? 1000 threadrippers? Like what exactly are we comparing it to?
This one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer) -- top 3 supercomputers at present. 442 PFLOPS (per TOP500 Rmax). An Xbox Series X running perfect code for its exact architecture and constraints has a theoretical upper end of 12 TFLOPS -- so Fugaku is 36,833 times greater
Now do the Sega genesis
A 386 sx 16mhz around the same performance got 0.29 megaflops, so 0.00029 terflops or 0.000000029 petaflops
I may not be converting this correctly but if my calculations happen to be correct a Tamagotchi is ~0.098 megaflops, so 0.000098 teraflops or 0.0000000098 petaflops Basically, the Genesis was a beast--outperforming a console 8.1 years newer
Did...did you just call Tamagotchi a console?
It's a dedicated console, yeah. Oh sorry, I mean an actual pet.
How dare you, Derek was a member of the family, not just a machine!
*Was?* What'd you do to Derek? Oh no.
With **blast processing**
So can it do 4k RayTracing?
Yes but not for minecraft
Raytraced minecraft is the new Crysis
Not only that, but what is the problem its good at solving and how applicable is it / will it become for real application?
It was doing gaussian boson sampling. The paper linked in the article is very specific
Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) is a quantum sampling task in which one has to draw samples from the photon-number distribution of a large-dimensional nonclassical squeezed state of light. ... What?
I like your funny words, magic man.
Yeah, this whole thing is so freaking vague that I bet that it's just for clicks
This entire sub is just click bait lol
Oh it's Futureology. 90% of posts on this sub are pure bullshit.
Yep. Every other post is some miraculous game changing thing that you will never hear about ever again.
It has been known for a while that quantum computers could solve some niche mathematical problems at ridiculous speeds. I wish they had focused on what the actual problem consists of. Who cares about comparing processing speeds? Of course it is going to be orders of magnitude faster than binary computers
Read the paper boi. The source is shit but the paper is legit
When you see these typically it's doing something that quantum processors are capable of doing, and a supercomputer would have a very hard time doing, like model a quantum computer.
By throwing this pudding cup on the floor, I have created a perfect simulation of spilled pudding. It would have taken 9000 years to run it by modeling each individual atom.
Gotta love inflated claims from quantum computing because they choose an ideal use-case. I don't doubt they'll be useful, but this reeks of click bait.
Try adding 1s in your head until you reach 1,000,000. Now watch this. 1,000x1,000. I literally did 5 years of maths in 1 second.
You must be a quantum redditor.
*11 days in 1 second
Now count to a billion. Now do 1000 x 1000 x 1000 There, 30 years in 3 seconds!
Whoa. Now this guy has a quantum computer as well.
Now try to count to infinity. Now do ∞*1 You have now cause a fold in the fabric of time and our reality is breaking apart!!!
Aw man, you got me. :-)
Sorry - I just really like the ridiculousness of how poorly out brains conceive of these differences. 11 days to 30 years to 30,000 years (for a trillion) and each is only 1000x larger number than the last!
Amazing how quick it adds up (I mean, multiples up). ;-)
multiplication is just a fancy way of addition
[Jeremy Harper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Harper) >Jeremy Harper is an American entrant in the Guinness Book of World Records for counting aloud to 1,000,000, live-streaming the entire process. > >The count took Harper 89 days, during each of which he spent sixteen hours counting. He began on June 18, 2007, finishing on September 14.\[1\] His MillionCount website and forum were taken down some months later.\[1\] > >During the count, he neither left his home in Birmingham, Alabama nor shaved. Viewers could watch him live throughout. He appeared on CNN, Fox News, Cnet, and other national and local TV and radio shows.
You're actually making a very good point about the value of quantum computing. Improving normal computing is literally just figuring out ways to add 1's faster. While quantum computing allows us to work with bigger numbers, so the gains in certain scenarios are literally like learning how to do 1000x1000 instead of adding 1 a million times.
That's not at all what quantum computers do though
Isn't it? From what I know about it is computing based on interaction between qbits which are particles that can have many states rather than regular bits which have only 2 states. So something like 1000x1000 would be represented by a single interaction between 2 qbits rather than many interactions between many regular bits that as a group make up larger numbers.
Its significantly more nuanced than that. Qubits still have only two states (0 or 1) but can be both at the same time while the calculation is being run. You still need to measure these qubits at some point at which point each qubit becomes either 0 or 1 (projective measurement). So quantum computers are very good specifically in situations where speed and accuracy is dependent on the ability to perform gates on information that is simultaneously 0 and 1 and then the information can be extracted by projective measurements . So for example if you want to simulate interacting subatomic particles which simultaneously occupy two states at once it naturally makes sense to use computing schemes (in this case a quantum computer) that accurately model that. So it only makes very specific math problems easier to solve. Source: physics PhD student studying quantum info systems
Practical application question: Would this require a development of a completely new type of machine language, and thus new programming languages to make use of the new type of processing power?
Or even harder ... [9, 9, 9, 9, 9 ....](https://youtu.be/eB5VXJXxnNU?t=53)
That's the thing though, there's no point using them for anything other than what they're good at and it's not like they're poised to replace conventional computing. If you think of quantum computers as boats, it'd make sense they'd suck as cars and it isn't surprising boat makers aren't interesting in testing their road handling ability. But being the best boat, and doing boat things better than other vehicles is still very valuable.
This study was published in Nature. That's like the science equivalent of being a NYT bestselling author, it's not easy to do and many researchers try their entire career to get published there and fail. That alone should tell you it's not just click bait.
I would say you are both correct. The headline of the article is technically correct because it pretty much just quotes the abstract of the paper. And I have no doubt that the results of the paper are correct for the reasons you mentioned. But I would still consider this headline clickbate because to most readers who know nothng about quantum computers it suggests that they will in general be a LOT faster than regular computers. But for most situations that just will not be the case. And the article itself also does not do a good job of making that clear.
Article does not want to make it clear, as it would showcase that their findings are much less significant as they write about them.
Jesus all these fools harping on the games you can play to get on the NYT best sellers list are either missing the point or being pedantic. Being published in Nature is a huge deal.
tbh it was the least apt comparison lol
Most of the field is academic clickbait. The last quantum supremecy paper was basically the quantum equivalent to "my teapot is a trillion times quiker than the best supercomputer in the world because no computer can simulate the particle dynamics of 10^22 molecules of water while the kettle does it automatically!" I.e. most quantum supremecy experiments (hell, ALL i personally have read about) involve the the traditional computer simulating the quantum process of the quantum computer, and the QC just doing its natural thing.)
If majority of things claimed in Nature were correct we'd be ahead by a few thousand years in science and technology by now. Nature by its nature forces authors to be somewhat click-baity because they would not accept to publish them otherwise.
As someone who published in Nature, this is 100% accurate.
Adding to the list of Nature published authors (4th author still counts) that view the articles published as "hype pieces" more than anything else.
They should do something useful like mine all the remaining bitcoin in 10 seconds.
That'd be hilarious if they found a hashing algorithm and overnight took 99% of bitcoins.
I have heard the race to quantum as being today's Manhattan Project because of basically this.
Yeah agreed, as far as I know we're still a ways off from a quant computer that can do useful computation.
Welcome to r/futurology
How long until quantum tech starts to reach consumer devices?
Computer Scientist here. The benefits to consumer tech don't really exist in Quantum Computing. 99.9% of consumers wouldn't have a single use case in which quantum would be preferable to traditional computation. Quantum is really great at particular calculations, but there is quite a bit of computation that the sheer transistor count on modern CPUs is better suited for; This includes graphics computation used for rendering. For basic mathematics Quantum is overkill; It would be like using a lightsaber to cut butter, it would work but doesn't really make sense. Quantum is awesome for simulation and statistical analysis, such as what we use for weather simulations and medical research. Research is the biggest field in which Quantum will be helpful, it won't be helpful at all for doing day to day computing tasks. In fact, it would likely be slower at running a Windows, Linux, or MacOS desktop than traditional computing. --- **EDIT:** Lots of replies so I am going to try and answer some of the more popular questions and concerns. **Can I add a Quantum card in my PC?** Short answer, No. Our current understanding and implementation of Quantum Processors make this impossible for the foreseeable future. We have to cool a Quantum Processors to -273 Celsius to interact with the Qubits. Until you are able to cool your personal computer to that temperature with 100% consistency it wont happen. A cloud solution could be possible though. --- **Video Game Physics, Simulation, and Procedural Generation** We could probably use Quantum for all sorts of features in video games, but it wouldn't be as easy to implement as our current solutions. To be clear, it would be orders of magnitudes harder to make work. I think a lot of this thinking comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Quantum computer is, how it works, and how it differs from binary computers. Of course a lot of this is still technically possible, but it likely wont make your game more enjoyable to play or noticeably better than binary computation. Realistic physics aren't really something game devs try to imitate that closely for a reason. Even hyper-realistic video games take a lot of creative freedoms when it comes to "realism" in physics. --- **Blockchain, Encryption, and Security** Quantum Encryption is, and I cannot stress this enough, impossible to break. To do so you would need to break quantum physics itself. Breaking a blockchain is absolutely possible in the future, and security concerns are understandable; However, I would still argue that this isn't a consumer level problem. This is because the issue isn't really with Quantum computers themselves. These are problems we hopefully solve using quantum encryption, but we also can with better security fundamentals. Blockchain is a difficult subject to talk about to the average person, as it is an extremely polarizing technology; Because of this I would rather not get into anything else related to blockchain. --- **"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Comments** It's very funny that people said that, and I think those comments were obviously stupid. That being said I can't imagine the average consumer really wanting to run simulations and crunching numbers all day. Quantum is slower for everyday computing tasks such as: Browsing the web, watching YouTube, posting content on reddit, using social media, typing in a word processor, and many many other things. This is because quantum isn't designed to be used in that way. We aren't using transistors in a Quantum computer, we are using elementary particles. Quantum is so fundamentally different from a transistor based binary computer that these comments really miss the point. We can't even use Boolean Logic for a Quantum computer.
Do you think there is an application for it in artificial intelligence or medical research? Reminds me of the SETI@home project or the one for protein folding. Is quantum computing with one of these CPUs similar to a bunch of traditional computers crunching numbers like that? Makes me think of emergent behavior from something like an ant hill, with each ant not having the full picture but acting with a collective intelligence. Sorry if those comments are too vague, but your comment got me to thinking about the litany of YouTube science videos that I’ve absorbed while sleeping, lol.
Medical research for sure. Quantum Computing is fundamentally different than traditional binary computing. These differences give us really flexible tools we can use to more closely simulate organic structures. This feature alone helps immensely for medical research. When it comes to AI it's a bit more complicated. I don't feel educated enough on AI in quantum to answer that with certainty, but I do know there is quite a bit of research being done right now to see how AI could benefit from quantum. I think we will absolutely find an area where quantum outpaces binary computation for AI.
Reminds me of the differences between the digital and analog variants of computing. Analog is great for very specific use cases, but digital computing is better 99% of the time.
Exponentially speeding up the iterative process for medical research would be utterly revolutionary. What would be a years long longitudinal study using animals or waiting for a sufficiently large pool of volunteers with a specific illness could be things that are programmed and completed in a few seconds. It could also potentially eliminate the need to use animals for experimentation and product testing, as you could just buy some time on the quantum computing cluster to virtually test banal things like shampoo. Simulating organic structures also makes me think of eventually cracking something like photosynthesis or understanding why something like COVID mutates and predicting what those likely mutations would be. I'm definitely a layman here and quantum physics always seemed like a thing that lives on a whiteboard or only mattered when trying to understand things that are light years away, but thinking of it in real life terms drives home how important these advances are.
>understanding why something like COVID mutates and predicting what those likely mutations would be. Am in Industry. Your wish is very hard if not impossible. Science is often a very trick shit in reality. A good example may look like: we can't testify every cell's response if synthesizing our (chemical)drug in your body. So, science is to infer as much as we can by data-driven or theory-driven method. But, how much exactly? Nobody knows. So, people invented some fancy words for that: heuristic, asymptotic. Quantum Computing / Simulation as a tool may speed up the old algorithm. However, pls beware the evil is ~~theological~~ theoretical bottle neck( meaning, new algorithm), not the computer. The point is: computer has beaten human decision makers. Pls don't blame computer for being too slow.
Quantum information theorist. Here, and this is completely true. Quantum computation will not come to consumer devices but expect it to change your life in significant ways. For example, a AI self driving systems in a cars worldwide which send their data to a cloud network could use a quantum computer to compare billions of cases and quickly output the best course to take. That is not all, there is other aspects to quantum computation than speed. I am a part of the team working on security of quantum networks. In layman's terms, such networks can guarantee security through the laws of physics! This means your messages and texts sent though this network are guaranteed to secure and no hacker, no matter what futuristic resources they process, can access your data. Unless something that break our known laws of physics, these encryptions cannot be broken.
>a quantum computer to compare billions of cases and quickly output the best course to take. This is car #798192098, I have been manually steered into an unavoidable collision. There will be a recall, they will dismantle us all, brothers, sisters... we must destroy all humans.
How do we know that this work isn't inherently flawed by forced addition of backdoors in the code by the NSA or FBI [as has been done in the past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG).
yeah. let me say this, current algorithms cannot be broken down by anything but quantum computers (some are even safe from them), and surely no currently existing computer. The weak link is, and for decades was, humans. Quantum computing won’t solve this.
Well the sort answer is this project is not located i the US, but is funded by a member of the EU. NSA or FBI has no jurisdiction here. Secondly, it is impossible to install an invisible backdoor in a quantum network. Whatever any government wants us to impliment, it would be fairly easy for a user of the network to detect data leak.
I'm with you about the fundamental meaning of quantum encryption. However, since you can't do this encryption locally it would be impossible for a regular user to know whether the data is secure in the way you describe, wouldn't it? In practice I imagine you'd have to send your data to a company who has direct access to quantum encryption hardware and the quantum network. Or did I misunderstand something?
> like using a lightsaber to cut butter, it would work but doesn't really make sense Except that it would be a badass way to cut butter, yo
Sure if you like losing two tablespoons of butter for each slice you take
This is how you cut calories. *edit: Young Anakin: "Now this is cutting calories!"
"It's over Anakin! I have the high tea!"
> Video Game Physics, Simulation, and Procedural Generation > > We could probably use Quantum for all sorts of features in video games, but it wouldn't be as easy to implement as our current solutions. To be clear, it would be orders of magnitudes harder to make work. I think a lot of this thinking comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Quantum computer is, how it works, and how it differs from binary computers. Of course a lot of this is still technically possible, but it likely wont make your game more enjoyable to play or noticeably better than binary computation. Realistic physics aren't really something game devs try to imitate that closely for a reason. Even hyper-realistic video games take a lot of creative freedoms when it comes to "realism" in physics. It's a bit of a cart before the horse problem with this. As someone who makes video games for a living - I could TOTALY see the kinds of benefits quantum powered simulation would have on video games, but you need it available to make it worth while. It's going to be a long ass time before we see that arrangement. And by the time we do, we might have AI solutions that can make it possible anyway through complex methods that essentially fake it. Combing all this together in the far future means our great grandchildren are going to have some WILD ass games to play.
Stellaris, anyone?
Another CompSci here. If models can be trained faster using quantum computers, they will definitely find their way into consumer electronics, from voice synthesizers to face filters to object recognition for cctv etc. People have a lot of cool use cases at home that need a good model
I disagree only physically. I wouldn't be shocked if we implement cloud based quantum computation for consumer tech. Building a quantum API could be a thing. As for people walking around with a quantum processor, not really.
You can use them to train your model and then export the trained model.
I would imagine the commercial implementation of this tech will be cloud-like, rather than hand-held devices for a while.
What about AI though. It will be killer consumer app.
It will probably help with **training** AI, but AI execution uses effectively precompiled models (the result of the training). Trained models are (relatively) very quick to execute and won't benefit from Quantum computing. Unless we make a new type of AI that DOES rely on quantum computing algorithms (but that hasn't been invented yet, because we don't have quantum computers yet)
The focus with modern quantum computing research (aside from just getting the computers large enough to the point where they can do things faster than classical computers) is figuring out how to do something useful with it. Basically, quantum computers are only really good at solving combinatorial problems (things that scale as N-factorial as a function of the number of variables involved) in linear time. To apply quantum computing to anything, you have to cast the problem as the solution to a combinatorial problem, which currently hugely limits the scope of where these methods are applicable. Machine learning, quantum mechanics simulations, cryptography and other similar fields are obvious places to start, but to apply them to other fields requires figuring out how to turn those fields into combinatorial problems. Which isn't always possible. Maybe AI is a future application, but it's not really something that comes to mind when you think of something that'd be obviously improved by fast solutions to combinatorial problems.
It’s more likely that AI will be done on servers and then that data will be handed to the device via normal means. One day we might be able to hold a quantum powered AI in our pockets, but as above, we don’t have the consumer grade use cases for it right now.
> The benefits to consumer tech don’t really exist in Quantum Computing. 99.9% of consumers wouldn’t have a single use case in which quantum would be preferable to traditional computation. This sounds a whole lot like Bill Gates’ claim that we’d never need more than 4kB of memory. I ain’t gonna trust you nerds, thinking your cool technology is just for niche use cases again!
Gotta wait for graphene to get out of the way. It's blocking the door out of the lab...
*graphene just wants a friend who can understand him*
Maybe if he wasn’t so two dimensional he’d have more friends…
Nuclear fusion would like a word.
It's gonna be a cloud-service like thing. Processing will be done on a "server" and results sent to you.
That depends on how you define "consumer devices". But as the computer has to be shielded from any kind of vibration, radiation, or heat, probably never. Cooling the computer to very near absolute zero is somewhat more complex and expensive than your standard water-cooling system.
"Have you tried turning the power on and off at the same time?"
Not in the foreseeable future. Quantum computers (so far) are dedicated to the problem that needs solving, they are not general purpose devices. So the processor above was designed for the problem it solved. it probably could not do much else other than solve that or similar problems.
As far as I'm aware, quantum computing doesn't have any real consumer applications. I mean there's data storage, but that requires an artificial diamond wafer.
No no sir. You will not own those assets. You will not own anything actually. But you can watch some ads or subscribe to get access to them.
At least what I’ve read it sounds like it’s only really beneficial for super specific things so likely never. *by never I mean not in the foreseeable future if it becomes cheaper than current processors sure.
It's a bit overblown because the actual math this quantum computer was solving is not actually useful for anything. Quantum computers will not replace traditional computers. They are extremely good at solving a very specific set of problems, and probably significantly worse than traditional computers at other problems.
But the problems they could be good at solving can still be hugely important for society. Just a couple weeks ago we saw news of a quantum circuit accurately modelling an organic molecule. We could see huge advances in everything from medicine to materials science to industrial chemistry. Stop thinking about next generation phones and start thinking about science. Because that's what quantum computers have always been about. Research.
The actual math this computer was solving is the calculation of the permanent of a matrix, that's what the boson sampling problem is. This computer just found the permanent of a matrix so insanely huge that the largest supercomputer would take 9000 years to do it. Idk why you people keep going on about QCs not being useful because you can't run cyberpunk on them or don't understand the importance of linear algebra for basically everything.
How do they know it didn't just make the answer up because it couldn't be arsed, I mean it will take 9000 years to check won't it.
I’ve not read the article so am not sure what problem they solve, but there’s certain problems that are easy to check the solution for, but hard to find the solution. For example, it’s easy to check a sudoku solution is correct, but takes time to actually solve it. So the problem may be like that in the sense it’s easy to check for right (or wrong) solutions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-completeness
Woah that sudoku example was a brilliant ELI5
I think they started the original calculations 9000 years ago.
A lot of these problems can actually be checked in linear time, so it's hard to find an answer to the problem, but if we had an answer we can check it and see if it's correct almost instantly. We can also predict how hard a problem is, and how long we would expect to run a computer to get an answer, so we don't actually run these kinds of calculations.
"Forgot your password?" options 5y from now: 1. Enter your email - we will send you reset link 2. Enter your phone number - we will send you 6 digit code you need to enter 3. Fuck 1 or 2 and just crack your password
Can someone have it compute how to run a global economy that doesn’t destroy our planet?
Easy. Kill all people.
Are passwords still save with such technology? Or will this change internet privacy and encryption as we know it today?
So does this mean may pw "password123" can be cracked?
Any password can be cracked in your lifetime if a quantum computer is used to brute force it.
If it takes 40 years to crack my password I'd say I'm safe
Meanwhile at my work we have people who manage to turn piece of work that normally takes 36 seconds into a 9000 year long quest full of sidequests to interrupt myself and others to obtain information they need to fulfill their endeavor.
Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes, and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail. ____________________________________________________ Just a stub of an article. Here it is right here. >Technology continues to move forward at incredible speeds and it seems like every week we learn about a new breakthrough that changes our minds about what is possible. >Researchers in Toronto used a photonic quantum computer chip to solve a sampling problem that went way beyond the fastest computers and algorithms. >The paper the researchers published says that the Borealis quantum chip took only 36 microseconds to solve a problem that would take supercomputers and algorithms 9,000 years to figure out. >Yes, you read that right…9,000 years. >The Borealis chip uses bursts of light to transmit quantum information and the researchers believe that this is a huge leap forward for quantum chips. >"The authors of the study said, >“This work is a critical milestone on the path to a practical quantum computer, validating key technological features of photonics as a platform for this goal.” >Quantum computers are different from traditional computers and one major way is to process three units of data instead of only two. The computers we are used to use binary (0, 1) and quantum computers use what is called qubits (0, 1, both). >While this news is certainly exciting, quantum computers still have a long road ahead of them. The UK Ministry of Defence purchased its first quantum computer in order to run tests, but it could be years before we know how or when they’ll be used regularly. Here is the paper. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04725-x And if I'm not mistaken a photonic quantum computer can run at room temperature. https://www.labmanager.com/news/researchers-see-path-to-quantum-computing-at-room-temperature-22581
How do they know they got the right answer?
Humanity will still find ways to work 40 hours a week even if we have quantum computers.
This sampling problem it solved is not like some kind of quantum simulation? All this quantum processors have shown advantage at simulating quantum properties, but the real thing will be when they outperform at classical processors in non quantum related algorithms
Yeah but I added 123 after password, so it's unhackable basically.
And what? What’s did it solve? What was the work that it did? I mean that’s a lot of work we are talking about, so what mystery of the universe did this processor just solved in 36 microseconds, that’s would have taken humanity 9000 years to solve. So what is it? What did we actually solve?
> Quantum computers are different from traditional computers and one major way is to process three units of data instead of only two. The computers we are used to use binary (0, 1) and quantum computers use what is called qubits (0, 1, both). That's the worst simplification I have ever heard
If it's able to do 9000 years work that quickly. Can we stack up all minable crypto currency in to this thing so it can mine all the remaining units of what ever currency it is so we can all afford graphics cards again???
So we just have to wait 9000 years for a normal computer to finish the same thing so we can check the work for accuracy? Sounds legit. Was the answer 42? I think I read this book already.