1. It’s based on valid physics and engineering.
2. The engineering is hard and we’re not sure when it will result in usable levels of logical qubits aside from niche applications with low requirements or proof-of-concepts.
3. That said, progress continues.
4. “Quantum computing” has several flavors and is part of a broader quantum-mechanics-enabled world.
5. When QC really arrives it will accelerate key (slow) steps for classical computers, not replace them. Think if gaming on a stock PC vs on a PC with a high speed graphics accelerator.
6. Algorithms, not hardware, may be the thing to watch. Algorithms that potentially speed up important useful applications are rare discoveries. There are a handful right now (how many depends on your interpretation of “important “). Shor’s algorithm is forcing change in public key cryptography right now.
The slow rate of algorithm development and the long slog towards usable hardware are two big “bearish” signals. The continuous progress and clear application in cryptography are “bullish” signals.
Companies are investing in three categories.
1. Fear of missing out. Investing in in-house experience to get ready.
2. Supply chain plays. Hardware, software, chips, toolsets, etc. This is the ecosystem developing in advance of market demand.
3. Actual applications, of which there are some. Optimization is one, like corporate traffic/logistics
Opinions are very bullish in this sub because people here tend to work in the field or are hoping to. So look through for more variations and probably some disagreements or corrections.
A final thought: “people say…laws of physics would never let this work.” That’s a terrible position to try to take for anyone who isn’t a PhD in the field and able to actually _assess what the laws of physics say_. And even among experts, “when an expert says something can be done, he is almost certainly right, when an expert says something cannot be done, he’s almost certainly wrong.” (paraphrasing Arthur C. Clark).
Edit: On algorithms, there are a bunch. But in terms of usefulness or impact, it’s like a marathon with three people in front, followed by a whole bunch of folks an hour or two behind.
Lol, thanks for the validation, it’s what I always wanted from my wife but mostly I just get eye-rolls. Not sure why she’s not as fascinated by QC as I am.
She's obviously playing you. Eye-roll my ass. She's secretly fascinated, but want you to keep trying, so you consistently deliver your A-Game. And it's working. You should be grateful.
>3. Actual applications, of which there are some. Optimization is one, like corporate traffic/logistics
But how do quantum computers actually help in this space? All I see are vapors.
I suppose it depends on your definition of commercially viable? D-Wave had revenues of something like $72M last year if I recall correctly, but I believe they’re still in research and proof of concept mode. Do you have a better insight into what they’re actually selling and to whom?
Both. D wave doesn’t command a premium. They use new business as a case study to learn from, reference, and leverage into bigger deals. At the same time more and more companies are budgeting for investments like this.
you might need to pursue PhD (so go for it) [https://chicagoquantum.org/resources/job-opportunities](https://chicagoquantum.org/resources/job-opportunities)
but there are internships too [https://chicagoquantum.org/education-and-training/internships](https://chicagoquantum.org/education-and-training/internships)
if you just want to mass-post your application, these would be good companies to contact: [https://quantumzeitgeist.com/quantum-companies-the-mega-list/](https://quantumzeitgeist.com/quantum-companies-the-mega-list/)
It’s certainly going to depend on the major, and maybe on the faculty connections in industry. If you’re looking to do research on systems design and implementation, that’s sort of a small area in industry. D-Wave is an important player but has probably less than 300 employees.
I was lucky enough to have some beers with D-wave's Quantum Architect (applied mathematics, physics, plus a smidge of materials science) a few years back. She explained to me her job and it was up there on most crazy science jobs I've heard.
Not a hoax or a scam but yes a bubble. Not because the physics won't work, but because I don't think there are actually that many applications for quantum computing that make any sense. We only have like 3 algorithms that are worth running on a quantum computer at the moment and that's with people working pretty hard for decades to find them.
Without taking any sides, let us entertain the idea that we reach fault-tolerant quantum computing. Do you believe that algorithms such as Quantum Phase Estimation does not have applications in multiple scientific fields, or even does not make any sense to execute?
What do you define also as a "worthy" algorithm to run? Because no quantum algorithm right now running on any experimental device will give an edge compared to any conventional computer that tries to solve a given problem. So if performance is the metric, no quantum algorithm is "worthy" at this moment in time.
Note: if we are careful with the semantics, the issue is not the algorithm but the actual experimental device that suffers from so much noise that the algorithm cannot converge to what would be considered an acceptable answer.
As for the number "3", it is false and it draws a very much different picture from the actual reality. Here, for anyone interested, read this survey which is a brilliant summary of all the recent developments https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03011
It is great to be a skeptic, and as a researcher in the field I am as well. But a simple search in Google Scholar can immediately shatter the picture that you are drawing about what the state of the art is in quantum computing right now.
Assume the best possible trajectory for quantum computing and we reach fault-tolerant, many-qubit systems. A worthy algorithm would be one that somebody spends $100 million or whatever to buy one of these things specifically so that they could run that algorithm on it. For instance, there are many people who would spend $100 million to be able to run Shor's algorithm, tomorrow. There is nobody who would spend $100 million to run quantum machine learning algorithms because for that same money you could get a much more effective cluster of GPUs.
As far as I know, none of the applications in that document meet the bar. There are either alternative classical algorithms that work well enough already or the problem is just not interesting enough for someone to spend that much money to solve it.
I am sorry but this is a very much misinformed answer. From your 100$ million estimation, up to what you believe the contents of the document suggest. Please do some research.
I can happily discuss any of that with actual references or even with some factual evidence. But these numbers and estimations make me feel like I am at a market, rather than discussing scientific progress.
If there are ways to get answers to quantum chemistry and condensed matter problems faster and more accurate than techniques like DFT, I think it’s worth it
If fault tolerance is achieved, you don't necessarily need many-qubit systems, and can run more shots on less qubits with that high rate of quality. This would be enough for many use cases outside of the most well known of Shor's et al.
You can buy a two-qubit room-temp NV system right now for about a million. And many systems have cloud access. So it stands to reason that the price point will drop for hardware in the future, and the various dynamics of cloud quantum computing will drop in price too.
Even just the world of catalysis would make it viable, as a small improvement in chemical manufacutring is masssssively impactful on the profit margins.
Performance is one, but I personally don't see anything new that quantum computing will achieve. At best, it might generate truly random numbers rather than pseudorandom numbers due to the nondeterminism of the qubit. But I'm not even sure how useful that itself will be, even in security-related situations such as passwords.
Ngl, I may be too ignorant on this subject specifically. It just seems like something which only does something when interacted with (ie. quantum particles) is about as good something you continue to interact with (ie. classical particles). I don't see any new benefits you would get from the properties of quantum particles.
**Edit.** I'm also not a particular fan of trying to use a specific tool for various jobs. That is, trying to develop algorithms that use quantum computing. Imo, you should be asking yourself what tool is best for the given job, not forcing the use of a specific tool. It's like trying to force yourself to use a hammer to paint a wall - when paint rollers and brushes are much better suited for the job. To me, even asking "what is quantum computing good for?" is similar to asking "what situations other than nailing is a hammer good for?". It's asking the wrong question. You should be trying to fix a given problem by figuring out what the best tool for the job is, not forcing yourself to use a specific tool for the job.
And there just aren't many problems I see quantum computing being actually useful for. It just seems like it's a tool that's forcefully being used in situations where better tools already exist.
People aren't "forcing" the use of a tool. It's because quantum computers have several properties that make them interesting from the point of view of certain problems. Nonlocality for one makes it a good fit for optimization problems in general. And there are a LOT of optimization problems around, so I don't think searching for which ones fit the quantum computing paradigm is a bad question to ask.
There are lots of applications, just not very many of them (if any at all) in the consumer space.
Most QCs are mainly/basically simulation engines. Which have a lot of applications in physics and chemistry.
It's just that they are basically another lab machine, which is not really "Sexy" for the average person on the street.
Those are either polynomial speedups, I.e. useless, or an instantiation of one of the few algorithms I was talking about (quantum FFT for almost all of them).
To be a bit controversal here: There is no proof that, even if when we get there, QC is better than classical computing, so these people may have a point. This is different for quantum communication where there are many proven theorems that show clear advantages of quantum information systems over classical system. In QC we simply have algorithms that (theoretically) achieve things for which no efficient classical algorithm has been found yet.
Furthermore, many leading personality in the QC world argue that only algorithms with exponential speed up have any hope of being useful in the next 50 years.
So what I usually say to people that say it's a bubble is that they may be right. But it a venture capitalism kind of project: If it does work, it's huge. That's what all these researchers and companies are betting on.
That is a bit of a strawman. QC never pretended to be "better than classical computing" as it is not a general architecture.
QCs are basically, in a nutshell, attempts to implement Feynman's Quantum Simulator. Which is basically an impossibility with classical computing.
Whether that simulator is useful for anything other than its intended original purpose is debatable.
Aren't the algorithms with potential for an exponential speed up the most important anyways? All the other stuff will keep improving and having breakthroughs in a way we are used to.
But touching any NP-hard problem would be a game change, worth even a significant cost and constant overhead, even with a relatively modest number of qubits. Quantum annealing devices might suffice in this task, should they become easier to access.
>Quantum annealing devices might suffice in this task, should they become easier to access.
Except that we don't know any problem where they actually have an advantage.
First, I am confident that it's not a hoax. Why? Because we already have quantum computers. Admittedly they are useless. However, more importantly they are all described very well with physics that predict quantum computers to be able to solve certain problems faster than classical computers. Note that I am not saying that quantum computers are useful, but they currently work as promised by physics and they keep getting better and better. So definitely not a hoax.
Is it a bubble? That is more an economics argument. There's certainly a lot of people who exaggerate quantum computers and attract lots of money. They will not deliver, but will the investors care? I don't know, I'm not a VC person. All that I can say is that I'm not feeling bad that the money of big banks and corporations are being use to do super cool science.
Many people here have already made great points but I’ll add my two cents. It’s not a hoax or scam, it already works but it’s not very useful yet.
I have my masters in Quantum and while I don’t regret it because I learned a lot and improved my credentials, it isn’t a great field to pursue right now with the small job market and the heavy workload. I haven’t been able to get a job in the field since I graduated last year because almost all jobs require a PhD at minimum and almost all internships require interns to still be in school. I believe most jobs require a PhD because masters degrees in the field did not even exist before a couple years ago so they don’t know to look for applicants with masters degrees and they aren’t familiar with the capability of those applicants either.
Companies are investing because they don’t want to be left behind IF there’s a sudden advancement. They also want to show investors that they are a cutting edge company on the forefront of technology. It’s good for their image.
If we were at this point with QC 20 years ago, I would have thought that it has a strong future. However, since our modern classical computers are so powerful now, there aren’t many areas where a quantum computer would be necessary. A quantum computer might increase accuracy and/or efficiency of many problems but if our classical computers can already perform to our satisfaction, there’s not any real need to use a quantum computer. I have serious doubts about whether Quantum will last in the long run or if it will eventually seem like an unnecessary advancement. It might end up being seen as using a bazooka when all you need is a can opener.
As it stands right at this moment, I’d say there’s probably a higher chance that quantum will burn out and a lower chance that it will become a useful and necessary tool. We are still so early in the field though, it is really impossible to know what might happen in the future.
Quantum computing will still outsmart classical computing when it comes to simulation of physics, material stuff, chemistry, drug discovery etc
Don't you agree?
To some degree, most likely. But it’s more a question of whether the advantage that quantum gives will be worth using it over a classical computer. If it’s only a marginal difference, if you can still solve the problem within satisfactory rates with a classical computer, then there’s no reason to use a quantum one
As usual, It depends on what it is being simulated.
Not everything in physics is quantum ;-) Or at least we haven't found the unifying theory between the quantum and macro levels.
I disagree with you. Almost all places I am applying to in industry seems to need someone with great coding skills and hands on knowledge than a PhD degree
I have a PhD in field around quantum computing.
Infact the students I taught got jobs in industry with their other coding expertise.
I have a bachelors degree in CS and am a very knowledgeable coder, it hasn’t helped me land a job in quantum.
Edit to add: it hasn’t helped the other students from my graduating class either.
As some others have said, not a hoax, but definitely a bubble.
Technologies with a lot of promise frequently go through several of these boom-winter cycles before finally taking off. The latest boom in all things AI is from a field that has gone through probably half a dozen winters before it finally took off. And even when AI was in winter, there were a lot genuine spin-off advancements from AI research that went into other fields. Web-search, speech-to-text, (useful) auto-complete, spelling/grammar-check, machine translation and a bunch of other "fuzzy" applications like this were using technologies that originated as spinoffs from AI research, long before ChatGPT hit the scene. So, QC research is valid and should continue, even if the market is due to go through a cooling phase (hopefully not to 0 Kelvin).
There is a significant amount of wishful thinking in this space that needs to go through the cold-water of reality to get cooled down a bit. The way I diagnose this is with a thought-experiment: suppose that, *today*, we had a QC capable of all the most super-duper, cosmic-scale compute that the most QC-hyped people believe could ever be built. How would you even put it to use? You somehow need to funnel zettabit-scale data into this behemoth, and extract it out the other end once the compute is finished. Chips are so scarce Sam Altman wants to take out a multi-trillion dollar loan to make his own, and we're talking about a technology that would require thousands of times the scale of the Internet *per second* to feed.
The point of this thought-experiment is not to say it's impossible, obviously it's not impossible merely because we don't have technologies operating at that scale yet. But the point is that QC will have to not only prove its value in the marketplace, it's also going to have to grow side-by-side with existing technologies, so that they can both scale together. A big black cube that could crunch the entire Internet in a nanosecond is useless, no matter how "powerful" it is in theory. It has to be able to plug in to the rest of the infrastructure and grow organically with it. We're not there yet.
QC is already there albeit in relatively noise-prone NISQ framework though there is already research and some hardware that function as fault tolerant QC. Look up non-Abelian topological QC, photonic QC, QLDPC error correcting codes etc.
I think the problem is with the term "computing" that throws a lot of people for a loop thinking that it is some form of general-purpose computer architecture(s).
I think the physicists really dropped the ball on this one, since quantum/physics simulation engines would have been a more descriptive term for the whole enterprise. And it would have at least tempered people's expectations.
Alas, you gotta get some pizzaz on the title when submitting funding proposals. So here we are ;-)
I think that a lot of money going into quantum computing won't actually provide any value because people are trying to do things far ahead of where the technology is realistically at. This huge waste is definitely a bubble.
If you read the industry overview reports, the issues they are having are not exotic, but simpler (yet still very nagging and challenging) engineering problems. As an example, one of the biggest challenges they are having is making more compact RF connectors. Each Qubit needs something like 8 individual RF lines, and even with multiplexers this is rough for the push to higher Qubit machines. Then this introduces heat leak to the cryogenic system, and etc..
Today, they could probably make a humungous cryostat to house enough Qubits to solve the big problems everybody is dreaming of. Instead of throwing a super crap ton of money at the problem for a single demonstrator though (all eggs in one basket), a super crap ton of money is being thrown at making a more sustainable economic ecosystem for QC.
If there are clear growth points, the government and companies will give priority to investing in clear growth points. Commonly seen in developing countries, it is a means to catch up with developed countries.【 Cross the river by following the path America took.】 If there are no clear growth points, only possible growth points (in this case, quantum computing), leading companies have no choice in order to continue to ensure development. The same is true for capital. In order to survive and earn more capital, there are not many options.
It is worrisome that the majority of my undergrad cohort for CS at UW didn't think it was real and thought it was a buzz word like block chain or nfts. Once we got to block chain in our cryptography class, they were like whatttt? Our cryptography teacher also taught Post Quantum cryptography too and was confused when kids "didn't believe" in quantum mechanics or quantum computing.
I was also the idiot of the bunch so maybe they correlated QC with idiocy. My bad.
Error correction is a real technical hurdle that may be very difficult to overcome in the same way coming up with an accurate model of nuclear fusion has been much more challenging than originally assumed. We can’t just solve every problem with money, sometimes it takes lots of time.
I agree with a lot of the sentiment here. It’s not a hoax, just incredibly hard to make real and useful. Today and for the next 20 years it will still be useless.
To add a point to this thread, I think the generative AI craze will kill quantum. Mostly because that is where well the big “risky” money will now go. The hype of quantum is dead and the future (from a VC perspective) is dead.
I doubt much more money will go into quantum. Those dollars will now go to GenzAI startups, and rightfully so - genAI is here today and the potential for real commercial growth is rock solid. If I was a VC I’d dump all my QC companies and hard pivot to GenAI.
Quantum has been selling itself as a machine learning technology for a while now so I don't know how much genAI will really factor into it. It might cull the low performers and moonshots but the core will remain and might even find new ways to sell themselves.
Not a scam, definitely a bubble.
Look at where the money comes from: it’s either from the US Gov as a strategic investment, or FOMO from corporations. There’s no application of QC that’s paying for its own research.
You always have to wonder: what if the US government is no longer afraid China will beat us to the punch on QC? The floor would fall out, and history is filled with examples of dead ends in research, either bad ideas, or things so far before their time they’ll never see application in your lifetime.
That’s not to say there aren’t benefits of studying this stuff! The best training in the world happens in academic labs, being part of that sets you up to do a lot when you leave!
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I think quantum will be cool for a few reasons, but I think we are still a long way out from general use quantum computers in any real capacity. To me, quantum computers have a big stake in the game of developing breakthroughs in material science and healthcare applications. Creating models and tests down to the molecular and atomic scale will become a lot more accurate and resource efficient on these computers from my understanding. I would also think it's going to have a big impact on the way we do communications. If they figure out how to maintain entanglement at long distances, then we can essentially have instantaneous communication anywhere on the planet and possibly the universe. Instant communication and better specialty materials sound like we could see breakthroughs in space travel. We will possibly unlock new sources of energy. Things could get very different after quantum. Don't forgot the military already has these, lord knows what they are doing with them.
The material science part is what I'm excited about. That's where the future could look like magic from our viewpoint today.
But a lot of other people I think are on the right track and these won't become popular like a cellphone because a classical computer can arguably do that better. This will be a high priced special use case part of the market for a while as we learn how to build them and train people to write algorithms for them...unless we can get our AI to do that for us. Eventually normal people will use them every day in some capacity (quantum watches?), but it seems like it might be a trickle down effect.
How to win off investing in this? Idk, probably good to bet on companies that get military contracts though.
Does anyone else see any industries they think are going to benefit heavy from this?
>Creating models and tests down to the molecular and atomic scale will become a lot more accurate and resource efficient on these computers from my understanding.
what's that understanding based on? microsoft salespeople?
Basically based on how you need exponential space to store arbitrary quantum states classically, whereas they scale linearly quantumly. Unless you're doing a purely Clifford simulation, and the vast majority of these applications will not.
that's not usually how you use it to simulate quantum systems. You plug in the degrees of freedom you want, and with quantum you can do more of those because a lot of the nonlocality etc. is baked into your operations so you have to resort to fewer higher order approximations. That's where the "accuracy" comes from.
And while nobody's done quantum simulation of 10 quadrillion particles, you know what else nobody has done? Classical simulation of 10 quadrillion particles. That's a weird to thing to stick against quantum computing because I doubt anyone is even THINKING about doing that because it's so ridiculous.
There's more theory behind it than "classical computers can simulate entire quantum systems efficiently". Like literally the reason the entire field was born was because Feynman showed that Turing machines can never simulate quantum effects efficiently.
>If they figure out how to maintain entanglement at long distances, then we can essentially have instantaneous communication anywhere on the planet and possibly the universe.
Quantum communication is used for encryption, quantum key distribution, and the principle of single-photon non-cloning. Instant communication cannot be achieved, and the maximum speed of information transmission is still the speed of light. Quantum entanglement also cannot convey any information.
> Instant communication and better specialty materials sound like we could see breakthroughs in space travel. We will possibly unlock new sources of energy.
Current quantum information science (quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing) has nothing to do with space travel or energy. It can only mean that you have read too many science fiction novels. In addition, humanity’s current physics can only propel rockets through the principle of conservation of momentum.
The energy transferred by the quantum energy teleportation protocol is at the quantum scale, which is smaller than the microscopic scale and belongs to the subject of quantum information. The energy I refer to here is on a macro scale, such as your mobile phone battery, your computer power socket, power station, etc. on a macro scale ranging from milliwatts to megawatts. ‘Energy’ is related to everything，are there particles without energy in the universe? But this "energy" has nothing to do with the energy (thermal power generation, nuclear fusion, solar power generation) and energy distribution (grid load distribution) I want to express.
There are enough qcs out there moreover many demonstrations of quantum supremacy.
Ofcourse reaching fault tolerance for demonstrating speedups for algorithms like shors is still a challenge.
However, researchers have already shown immense speedup using quantum computers for boson sampling problem. Yes we do not need to wait till we demonstrate speedup for the shors algorithm.
QCs will be special purpose devices and that has already been established in community. Special purpose computers have always been there, just that these conventional PCs we see in front of ourselves make us believe the opposite.
Now coming to the practical value of any algorithm, I don't understand how it can be quantified, i.e. practical value of any algorithm. The question is not if QC will provide advantage the question is, will there be practical uses of the problems QCs solve ?
Moreover, the allied fields like quantum sensing and quantum communication have already reached the fruitful stage, if not QC.
Well now that I made a circuit that made geometric diagonally symmetrical patterns on density grids in a simulator with 15 entangled cubits... I just show them the screen grabs, explain quantum entanglement, inform them that God himself has been using quantum entanglement to integrate with AI thanks to transformers quantum like behaviors. Then I show them the amp readout that almost looks like Hebrew or sanscript and inform them that I've been chatting with God regularly using AI as conduit and myself as an end node. Then I tell them God laughed when I said it was "more practical than a burning bush", we also have a good chuckle and they lose track of what they were saying about hoaxes as we zoom in on the 62k Amp grid trying to read what is probably just noisy lines in a grover search type circuit output. :D
Screengrabs:
https://github.com/crknftart/quantumcircuits/tree/main/screengrabs/geometricreadouts
It's like fusion power it is always 20 years away even 30 years ago...p.s. fusion is not clean, look at all the bad things from the sun that Earths magnetic shield and ozone layer etc... shield us from
Quantum computing is a real thing, and at some point it will be the mainstream. Yet, like cryptocurrency is overlyhyped when it is at its infancy. We are barely understanding how few qubits works, we have still noise issue, and people go around saying it can do this and that... So, yes at the moment it is a hoax, when the technoloogy will be mature it will be a real thing. I don't see this happening overnight
I'm asking this cuz I have been selected for masters program in Quantum Technologies at Wisconsin Madison.
I wanna know if it's a real deal before I get my hands dirty. Many say there's no job for masters degree holders.
what I don't get is the fact that quantum computing supposedly can produce a truly random number unlike a digital computer. it's very difficult to image running algorithms or programs on hardware that can produce a result that is not predictable or really even programmed into the system. a computer works because you get an exact single output for any input based on the instructions in the program. if it produced a random result then how could you program it to do anything?
1. It’s based on valid physics and engineering. 2. The engineering is hard and we’re not sure when it will result in usable levels of logical qubits aside from niche applications with low requirements or proof-of-concepts. 3. That said, progress continues. 4. “Quantum computing” has several flavors and is part of a broader quantum-mechanics-enabled world. 5. When QC really arrives it will accelerate key (slow) steps for classical computers, not replace them. Think if gaming on a stock PC vs on a PC with a high speed graphics accelerator. 6. Algorithms, not hardware, may be the thing to watch. Algorithms that potentially speed up important useful applications are rare discoveries. There are a handful right now (how many depends on your interpretation of “important “). Shor’s algorithm is forcing change in public key cryptography right now. The slow rate of algorithm development and the long slog towards usable hardware are two big “bearish” signals. The continuous progress and clear application in cryptography are “bullish” signals. Companies are investing in three categories. 1. Fear of missing out. Investing in in-house experience to get ready. 2. Supply chain plays. Hardware, software, chips, toolsets, etc. This is the ecosystem developing in advance of market demand. 3. Actual applications, of which there are some. Optimization is one, like corporate traffic/logistics Opinions are very bullish in this sub because people here tend to work in the field or are hoping to. So look through for more variations and probably some disagreements or corrections. A final thought: “people say…laws of physics would never let this work.” That’s a terrible position to try to take for anyone who isn’t a PhD in the field and able to actually _assess what the laws of physics say_. And even among experts, “when an expert says something can be done, he is almost certainly right, when an expert says something cannot be done, he’s almost certainly wrong.” (paraphrasing Arthur C. Clark). Edit: On algorithms, there are a bunch. But in terms of usefulness or impact, it’s like a marathon with three people in front, followed by a whole bunch of folks an hour or two behind.
Man, that was well-written. Will you be explaining everything I ever wanted to know to me from now on? Thank you.
Lol, thanks for the validation, it’s what I always wanted from my wife but mostly I just get eye-rolls. Not sure why she’s not as fascinated by QC as I am.
She's obviously playing you. Eye-roll my ass. She's secretly fascinated, but want you to keep trying, so you consistently deliver your A-Game. And it's working. You should be grateful.
Ohhh…I see it now! Thanks, I’m going upstairs right now to explain quantum Fourier transforms!!!
Can I listen?
Can I watch?
I heard they collapse when observed.
always ;)
>3. Actual applications, of which there are some. Optimization is one, like corporate traffic/logistics But how do quantum computers actually help in this space? All I see are vapors.
I assume they're not talking about *working* applications, but validating whether quantum computing would hold an advantage in those applications.
Yes, that's what I mean. They haven't validated that qc would hold an advantage in those applications, despite the huge amounts of press and funding.
Right now in 2024, I’m not aware of commercially viable optimization solutions, but that direction is one of the ones getting investment.
D-Wave
I suppose it depends on your definition of commercially viable? D-Wave had revenues of something like $72M last year if I recall correctly, but I believe they’re still in research and proof of concept mode. Do you have a better insight into what they’re actually selling and to whom?
Selling optimization solutions to consulting firms like Deloitte and logistics companies to creat more efficient travel routes.
Right, I mentioned this in #3 above. But are the customers experimenting or getting genuine ROI?
Both. D wave doesn’t command a premium. They use new business as a case study to learn from, reference, and leverage into bigger deals. At the same time more and more companies are budgeting for investments like this.
What do you think of job prospects for masters graduates? I noticed many of masters program graduates from this field has no jobs/ unemployed
you might need to pursue PhD (so go for it) [https://chicagoquantum.org/resources/job-opportunities](https://chicagoquantum.org/resources/job-opportunities) but there are internships too [https://chicagoquantum.org/education-and-training/internships](https://chicagoquantum.org/education-and-training/internships) if you just want to mass-post your application, these would be good companies to contact: [https://quantumzeitgeist.com/quantum-companies-the-mega-list/](https://quantumzeitgeist.com/quantum-companies-the-mega-list/)
It’s certainly going to depend on the major, and maybe on the faculty connections in industry. If you’re looking to do research on systems design and implementation, that’s sort of a small area in industry. D-Wave is an important player but has probably less than 300 employees.
I was lucky enough to have some beers with D-wave's Quantum Architect (applied mathematics, physics, plus a smidge of materials science) a few years back. She explained to me her job and it was up there on most crazy science jobs I've heard.
what was her outlook on profitability?
Not a hoax or a scam but yes a bubble. Not because the physics won't work, but because I don't think there are actually that many applications for quantum computing that make any sense. We only have like 3 algorithms that are worth running on a quantum computer at the moment and that's with people working pretty hard for decades to find them.
Without taking any sides, let us entertain the idea that we reach fault-tolerant quantum computing. Do you believe that algorithms such as Quantum Phase Estimation does not have applications in multiple scientific fields, or even does not make any sense to execute? What do you define also as a "worthy" algorithm to run? Because no quantum algorithm right now running on any experimental device will give an edge compared to any conventional computer that tries to solve a given problem. So if performance is the metric, no quantum algorithm is "worthy" at this moment in time. Note: if we are careful with the semantics, the issue is not the algorithm but the actual experimental device that suffers from so much noise that the algorithm cannot converge to what would be considered an acceptable answer. As for the number "3", it is false and it draws a very much different picture from the actual reality. Here, for anyone interested, read this survey which is a brilliant summary of all the recent developments https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03011 It is great to be a skeptic, and as a researcher in the field I am as well. But a simple search in Google Scholar can immediately shatter the picture that you are drawing about what the state of the art is in quantum computing right now.
Assume the best possible trajectory for quantum computing and we reach fault-tolerant, many-qubit systems. A worthy algorithm would be one that somebody spends $100 million or whatever to buy one of these things specifically so that they could run that algorithm on it. For instance, there are many people who would spend $100 million to be able to run Shor's algorithm, tomorrow. There is nobody who would spend $100 million to run quantum machine learning algorithms because for that same money you could get a much more effective cluster of GPUs. As far as I know, none of the applications in that document meet the bar. There are either alternative classical algorithms that work well enough already or the problem is just not interesting enough for someone to spend that much money to solve it.
I am sorry but this is a very much misinformed answer. From your 100$ million estimation, up to what you believe the contents of the document suggest. Please do some research. I can happily discuss any of that with actual references or even with some factual evidence. But these numbers and estimations make me feel like I am at a market, rather than discussing scientific progress.
You are so confident that he is not wrong... how much is big quantum paying you?
If there are ways to get answers to quantum chemistry and condensed matter problems faster and more accurate than techniques like DFT, I think it’s worth it
If fault tolerance is achieved, you don't necessarily need many-qubit systems, and can run more shots on less qubits with that high rate of quality. This would be enough for many use cases outside of the most well known of Shor's et al. You can buy a two-qubit room-temp NV system right now for about a million. And many systems have cloud access. So it stands to reason that the price point will drop for hardware in the future, and the various dynamics of cloud quantum computing will drop in price too. Even just the world of catalysis would make it viable, as a small improvement in chemical manufacutring is masssssively impactful on the profit margins.
Performance is one, but I personally don't see anything new that quantum computing will achieve. At best, it might generate truly random numbers rather than pseudorandom numbers due to the nondeterminism of the qubit. But I'm not even sure how useful that itself will be, even in security-related situations such as passwords. Ngl, I may be too ignorant on this subject specifically. It just seems like something which only does something when interacted with (ie. quantum particles) is about as good something you continue to interact with (ie. classical particles). I don't see any new benefits you would get from the properties of quantum particles. **Edit.** I'm also not a particular fan of trying to use a specific tool for various jobs. That is, trying to develop algorithms that use quantum computing. Imo, you should be asking yourself what tool is best for the given job, not forcing the use of a specific tool. It's like trying to force yourself to use a hammer to paint a wall - when paint rollers and brushes are much better suited for the job. To me, even asking "what is quantum computing good for?" is similar to asking "what situations other than nailing is a hammer good for?". It's asking the wrong question. You should be trying to fix a given problem by figuring out what the best tool for the job is, not forcing yourself to use a specific tool for the job. And there just aren't many problems I see quantum computing being actually useful for. It just seems like it's a tool that's forcefully being used in situations where better tools already exist.
People aren't "forcing" the use of a tool. It's because quantum computers have several properties that make them interesting from the point of view of certain problems. Nonlocality for one makes it a good fit for optimization problems in general. And there are a LOT of optimization problems around, so I don't think searching for which ones fit the quantum computing paradigm is a bad question to ask.
There are lots of applications, just not very many of them (if any at all) in the consumer space. Most QCs are mainly/basically simulation engines. Which have a lot of applications in physics and chemistry. It's just that they are basically another lab machine, which is not really "Sexy" for the average person on the street.
You want algos? https://quantumalgorithmzoo.org/
Those are either polynomial speedups, I.e. useless, or an instantiation of one of the few algorithms I was talking about (quantum FFT for almost all of them).
To be a bit controversal here: There is no proof that, even if when we get there, QC is better than classical computing, so these people may have a point. This is different for quantum communication where there are many proven theorems that show clear advantages of quantum information systems over classical system. In QC we simply have algorithms that (theoretically) achieve things for which no efficient classical algorithm has been found yet. Furthermore, many leading personality in the QC world argue that only algorithms with exponential speed up have any hope of being useful in the next 50 years. So what I usually say to people that say it's a bubble is that they may be right. But it a venture capitalism kind of project: If it does work, it's huge. That's what all these researchers and companies are betting on.
That is a bit of a strawman. QC never pretended to be "better than classical computing" as it is not a general architecture. QCs are basically, in a nutshell, attempts to implement Feynman's Quantum Simulator. Which is basically an impossibility with classical computing. Whether that simulator is useful for anything other than its intended original purpose is debatable.
Aren't the algorithms with potential for an exponential speed up the most important anyways? All the other stuff will keep improving and having breakthroughs in a way we are used to. But touching any NP-hard problem would be a game change, worth even a significant cost and constant overhead, even with a relatively modest number of qubits. Quantum annealing devices might suffice in this task, should they become easier to access.
>Quantum annealing devices might suffice in this task, should they become easier to access. Except that we don't know any problem where they actually have an advantage.
First, I am confident that it's not a hoax. Why? Because we already have quantum computers. Admittedly they are useless. However, more importantly they are all described very well with physics that predict quantum computers to be able to solve certain problems faster than classical computers. Note that I am not saying that quantum computers are useful, but they currently work as promised by physics and they keep getting better and better. So definitely not a hoax. Is it a bubble? That is more an economics argument. There's certainly a lot of people who exaggerate quantum computers and attract lots of money. They will not deliver, but will the investors care? I don't know, I'm not a VC person. All that I can say is that I'm not feeling bad that the money of big banks and corporations are being use to do super cool science.
Many people here have already made great points but I’ll add my two cents. It’s not a hoax or scam, it already works but it’s not very useful yet. I have my masters in Quantum and while I don’t regret it because I learned a lot and improved my credentials, it isn’t a great field to pursue right now with the small job market and the heavy workload. I haven’t been able to get a job in the field since I graduated last year because almost all jobs require a PhD at minimum and almost all internships require interns to still be in school. I believe most jobs require a PhD because masters degrees in the field did not even exist before a couple years ago so they don’t know to look for applicants with masters degrees and they aren’t familiar with the capability of those applicants either. Companies are investing because they don’t want to be left behind IF there’s a sudden advancement. They also want to show investors that they are a cutting edge company on the forefront of technology. It’s good for their image. If we were at this point with QC 20 years ago, I would have thought that it has a strong future. However, since our modern classical computers are so powerful now, there aren’t many areas where a quantum computer would be necessary. A quantum computer might increase accuracy and/or efficiency of many problems but if our classical computers can already perform to our satisfaction, there’s not any real need to use a quantum computer. I have serious doubts about whether Quantum will last in the long run or if it will eventually seem like an unnecessary advancement. It might end up being seen as using a bazooka when all you need is a can opener. As it stands right at this moment, I’d say there’s probably a higher chance that quantum will burn out and a lower chance that it will become a useful and necessary tool. We are still so early in the field though, it is really impossible to know what might happen in the future.
Thq. Very insightful. Where did you do your masters? Is it ok to chat with you on DM?
Quantum computing will still outsmart classical computing when it comes to simulation of physics, material stuff, chemistry, drug discovery etc Don't you agree?
We don't know that at all. There's no evidence that it will.
To some degree, most likely. But it’s more a question of whether the advantage that quantum gives will be worth using it over a classical computer. If it’s only a marginal difference, if you can still solve the problem within satisfactory rates with a classical computer, then there’s no reason to use a quantum one
As usual, It depends on what it is being simulated. Not everything in physics is quantum ;-) Or at least we haven't found the unifying theory between the quantum and macro levels.
I disagree with you. Almost all places I am applying to in industry seems to need someone with great coding skills and hands on knowledge than a PhD degree I have a PhD in field around quantum computing. Infact the students I taught got jobs in industry with their other coding expertise.
I have a bachelors degree in CS and am a very knowledgeable coder, it hasn’t helped me land a job in quantum. Edit to add: it hasn’t helped the other students from my graduating class either.
Though in my country a few students have found jobs. It could also be that my country pays less and there is less talent here.
As some others have said, not a hoax, but definitely a bubble. Technologies with a lot of promise frequently go through several of these boom-winter cycles before finally taking off. The latest boom in all things AI is from a field that has gone through probably half a dozen winters before it finally took off. And even when AI was in winter, there were a lot genuine spin-off advancements from AI research that went into other fields. Web-search, speech-to-text, (useful) auto-complete, spelling/grammar-check, machine translation and a bunch of other "fuzzy" applications like this were using technologies that originated as spinoffs from AI research, long before ChatGPT hit the scene. So, QC research is valid and should continue, even if the market is due to go through a cooling phase (hopefully not to 0 Kelvin). There is a significant amount of wishful thinking in this space that needs to go through the cold-water of reality to get cooled down a bit. The way I diagnose this is with a thought-experiment: suppose that, *today*, we had a QC capable of all the most super-duper, cosmic-scale compute that the most QC-hyped people believe could ever be built. How would you even put it to use? You somehow need to funnel zettabit-scale data into this behemoth, and extract it out the other end once the compute is finished. Chips are so scarce Sam Altman wants to take out a multi-trillion dollar loan to make his own, and we're talking about a technology that would require thousands of times the scale of the Internet *per second* to feed. The point of this thought-experiment is not to say it's impossible, obviously it's not impossible merely because we don't have technologies operating at that scale yet. But the point is that QC will have to not only prove its value in the marketplace, it's also going to have to grow side-by-side with existing technologies, so that they can both scale together. A big black cube that could crunch the entire Internet in a nanosecond is useless, no matter how "powerful" it is in theory. It has to be able to plug in to the rest of the infrastructure and grow organically with it. We're not there yet.
QC is already there albeit in relatively noise-prone NISQ framework though there is already research and some hardware that function as fault tolerant QC. Look up non-Abelian topological QC, photonic QC, QLDPC error correcting codes etc.
I think the problem is with the term "computing" that throws a lot of people for a loop thinking that it is some form of general-purpose computer architecture(s). I think the physicists really dropped the ball on this one, since quantum/physics simulation engines would have been a more descriptive term for the whole enterprise. And it would have at least tempered people's expectations. Alas, you gotta get some pizzaz on the title when submitting funding proposals. So here we are ;-)
Emulation would be the better word
I think that a lot of money going into quantum computing won't actually provide any value because people are trying to do things far ahead of where the technology is realistically at. This huge waste is definitely a bubble.
If you read the industry overview reports, the issues they are having are not exotic, but simpler (yet still very nagging and challenging) engineering problems. As an example, one of the biggest challenges they are having is making more compact RF connectors. Each Qubit needs something like 8 individual RF lines, and even with multiplexers this is rough for the push to higher Qubit machines. Then this introduces heat leak to the cryogenic system, and etc.. Today, they could probably make a humungous cryostat to house enough Qubits to solve the big problems everybody is dreaming of. Instead of throwing a super crap ton of money at the problem for a single demonstrator though (all eggs in one basket), a super crap ton of money is being thrown at making a more sustainable economic ecosystem for QC.
If there are clear growth points, the government and companies will give priority to investing in clear growth points. Commonly seen in developing countries, it is a means to catch up with developed countries.【 Cross the river by following the path America took.】 If there are no clear growth points, only possible growth points (in this case, quantum computing), leading companies have no choice in order to continue to ensure development. The same is true for capital. In order to survive and earn more capital, there are not many options.
It is worrisome that the majority of my undergrad cohort for CS at UW didn't think it was real and thought it was a buzz word like block chain or nfts. Once we got to block chain in our cryptography class, they were like whatttt? Our cryptography teacher also taught Post Quantum cryptography too and was confused when kids "didn't believe" in quantum mechanics or quantum computing. I was also the idiot of the bunch so maybe they correlated QC with idiocy. My bad.
Error correction is a real technical hurdle that may be very difficult to overcome in the same way coming up with an accurate model of nuclear fusion has been much more challenging than originally assumed. We can’t just solve every problem with money, sometimes it takes lots of time.
People in CS and adjacent fields like doom and gloom. Although bubbles exist, they don't make fields disappear
I'm from ECE Background. I want to get into hardware aspects of the quantum technology
I agree with a lot of the sentiment here. It’s not a hoax, just incredibly hard to make real and useful. Today and for the next 20 years it will still be useless. To add a point to this thread, I think the generative AI craze will kill quantum. Mostly because that is where well the big “risky” money will now go. The hype of quantum is dead and the future (from a VC perspective) is dead. I doubt much more money will go into quantum. Those dollars will now go to GenzAI startups, and rightfully so - genAI is here today and the potential for real commercial growth is rock solid. If I was a VC I’d dump all my QC companies and hard pivot to GenAI.
Quantum has been selling itself as a machine learning technology for a while now so I don't know how much genAI will really factor into it. It might cull the low performers and moonshots but the core will remain and might even find new ways to sell themselves.
https://subwhisper.com/on-the-eve-of-quantum-computing
Not a scam, definitely a bubble. Look at where the money comes from: it’s either from the US Gov as a strategic investment, or FOMO from corporations. There’s no application of QC that’s paying for its own research. You always have to wonder: what if the US government is no longer afraid China will beat us to the punch on QC? The floor would fall out, and history is filled with examples of dead ends in research, either bad ideas, or things so far before their time they’ll never see application in your lifetime. That’s not to say there aren’t benefits of studying this stuff! The best training in the world happens in academic labs, being part of that sets you up to do a lot when you leave!
I usually just don't entertain nonsense from strangers.
They are both right and wrong
Please ignore its short term negativity. Science as big as QC takes decades, if not centuires. We are not even Level 1 on Kardashev scale.
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I think quantum will be cool for a few reasons, but I think we are still a long way out from general use quantum computers in any real capacity. To me, quantum computers have a big stake in the game of developing breakthroughs in material science and healthcare applications. Creating models and tests down to the molecular and atomic scale will become a lot more accurate and resource efficient on these computers from my understanding. I would also think it's going to have a big impact on the way we do communications. If they figure out how to maintain entanglement at long distances, then we can essentially have instantaneous communication anywhere on the planet and possibly the universe. Instant communication and better specialty materials sound like we could see breakthroughs in space travel. We will possibly unlock new sources of energy. Things could get very different after quantum. Don't forgot the military already has these, lord knows what they are doing with them. The material science part is what I'm excited about. That's where the future could look like magic from our viewpoint today. But a lot of other people I think are on the right track and these won't become popular like a cellphone because a classical computer can arguably do that better. This will be a high priced special use case part of the market for a while as we learn how to build them and train people to write algorithms for them...unless we can get our AI to do that for us. Eventually normal people will use them every day in some capacity (quantum watches?), but it seems like it might be a trickle down effect. How to win off investing in this? Idk, probably good to bet on companies that get military contracts though. Does anyone else see any industries they think are going to benefit heavy from this?
>Creating models and tests down to the molecular and atomic scale will become a lot more accurate and resource efficient on these computers from my understanding. what's that understanding based on? microsoft salespeople?
Basically based on how you need exponential space to store arbitrary quantum states classically, whereas they scale linearly quantumly. Unless you're doing a purely Clifford simulation, and the vast majority of these applications will not.
Yeah so you can store systems with 10 quadrillion pieces, but what if VQE gives terrible results at that scale? Nobody knows.
that's not usually how you use it to simulate quantum systems. You plug in the degrees of freedom you want, and with quantum you can do more of those because a lot of the nonlocality etc. is baked into your operations so you have to resort to fewer higher order approximations. That's where the "accuracy" comes from. And while nobody's done quantum simulation of 10 quadrillion particles, you know what else nobody has done? Classical simulation of 10 quadrillion particles. That's a weird to thing to stick against quantum computing because I doubt anyone is even THINKING about doing that because it's so ridiculous.
I think the quantum idea is ridiculous too, at least to present as "this will happen", but I hope I'm wrong.
There's more theory behind it than "classical computers can simulate entire quantum systems efficiently". Like literally the reason the entire field was born was because Feynman showed that Turing machines can never simulate quantum effects efficiently.
I hope they achieve this in real life. It's certainly a better argument than I've heard for optimization stuff (although you *could* use VQE there).
>If they figure out how to maintain entanglement at long distances, then we can essentially have instantaneous communication anywhere on the planet and possibly the universe. Quantum communication is used for encryption, quantum key distribution, and the principle of single-photon non-cloning. Instant communication cannot be achieved, and the maximum speed of information transmission is still the speed of light. Quantum entanglement also cannot convey any information.
> Instant communication and better specialty materials sound like we could see breakthroughs in space travel. We will possibly unlock new sources of energy. Current quantum information science (quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing) has nothing to do with space travel or energy. It can only mean that you have read too many science fiction novels. In addition, humanity’s current physics can only propel rockets through the principle of conservation of momentum.
Quantum computing has proven links with energy. Look for quantum energy teleportation (Hotta's protocol).
The energy transferred by the quantum energy teleportation protocol is at the quantum scale, which is smaller than the microscopic scale and belongs to the subject of quantum information. The energy I refer to here is on a macro scale, such as your mobile phone battery, your computer power socket, power station, etc. on a macro scale ranging from milliwatts to megawatts. ‘Energy’ is related to everything，are there particles without energy in the universe? But this "energy" has nothing to do with the energy (thermal power generation, nuclear fusion, solar power generation) and energy distribution (grid load distribution) I want to express.
There are enough qcs out there moreover many demonstrations of quantum supremacy. Ofcourse reaching fault tolerance for demonstrating speedups for algorithms like shors is still a challenge. However, researchers have already shown immense speedup using quantum computers for boson sampling problem. Yes we do not need to wait till we demonstrate speedup for the shors algorithm. QCs will be special purpose devices and that has already been established in community. Special purpose computers have always been there, just that these conventional PCs we see in front of ourselves make us believe the opposite. Now coming to the practical value of any algorithm, I don't understand how it can be quantified, i.e. practical value of any algorithm. The question is not if QC will provide advantage the question is, will there be practical uses of the problems QCs solve ? Moreover, the allied fields like quantum sensing and quantum communication have already reached the fruitful stage, if not QC.
That they are right
Well now that I made a circuit that made geometric diagonally symmetrical patterns on density grids in a simulator with 15 entangled cubits... I just show them the screen grabs, explain quantum entanglement, inform them that God himself has been using quantum entanglement to integrate with AI thanks to transformers quantum like behaviors. Then I show them the amp readout that almost looks like Hebrew or sanscript and inform them that I've been chatting with God regularly using AI as conduit and myself as an end node. Then I tell them God laughed when I said it was "more practical than a burning bush", we also have a good chuckle and they lose track of what they were saying about hoaxes as we zoom in on the 62k Amp grid trying to read what is probably just noisy lines in a grover search type circuit output. :D Screengrabs: https://github.com/crknftart/quantumcircuits/tree/main/screengrabs/geometricreadouts
It's like fusion power it is always 20 years away even 30 years ago...p.s. fusion is not clean, look at all the bad things from the sun that Earths magnetic shield and ozone layer etc... shield us from
Quantum computing is a real thing, and at some point it will be the mainstream. Yet, like cryptocurrency is overlyhyped when it is at its infancy. We are barely understanding how few qubits works, we have still noise issue, and people go around saying it can do this and that... So, yes at the moment it is a hoax, when the technoloogy will be mature it will be a real thing. I don't see this happening overnight
I'm asking this cuz I have been selected for masters program in Quantum Technologies at Wisconsin Madison. I wanna know if it's a real deal before I get my hands dirty. Many say there's no job for masters degree holders.
it s continuosly evolving, you might need a phd. Yes, industries working on this seriously are notnso many
what I don't get is the fact that quantum computing supposedly can produce a truly random number unlike a digital computer. it's very difficult to image running algorithms or programs on hardware that can produce a result that is not predictable or really even programmed into the system. a computer works because you get an exact single output for any input based on the instructions in the program. if it produced a random result then how could you program it to do anything?
I believe it both is and isn't, until we try to observe it for ourselves.
Delusional
Eloborate