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By the end of 2017, Google hopes to prove quantum computers can beat classical
- jptman 9y agoCan someone explain the computation the article talks about further? All it says is that the array will go into a chaotic state and produce seemingly random output.
- brink 9y agoHere's an educational video on the subject that explains it in a way that everyone can understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHMJCUmq28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHMJCUmq28
- jessriedel 9y agoThis video doesn't discuss quantum supremacy, so it does nothing to answer his question.
- aisofteng 9y agoIt does however establish the background material. Inability to make the connection is a failure of intellect and imagination.
- thearn4 9y agoIt wasn't clear to me either. Demonstrated "supremacy" over conventional general-purpose CPUs, as described in the article, does certainly read like hyperbole.
- jessriedel 9y ago"Supremacy" is a technical term used by people in the field, albeit sometimes in different ways. https://twitter.com/quantum_graeme/status/849317195599556609 https://twitter.com/quantum_graeme/status/849317195599556609
- thearn4 9y agoInteresting, I assumed they meant the term colloquially.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoHere is another link that, while being a tiny bit mathematically rigourous, made me have an "a ha" moment about how quantum computtattion works. PBS Digital Studios is truly a treasure and really shows what's possible with eduxation when you truly take advantage of internet video.
- blechinger 9y agoYou mentioned a link to another educational video, however; you provided no links in your comment. Would you mind editing your content to include the link? I'm quite interested.
- JosephHatfield 9y agoMaybe this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrbJYsep45E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrbJYsep45E
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoYou also read my mind.
- nerdponx 9y agoI tried to find it im the PBS Digital Studios YouTube channel and failed. But I did learn about PBS Digital Studios!
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoSpecifically, it's the Infinite series. Math is so much easier to understand with animations. Something that would take me hours of dense reading of some dusty tome can to grok requires only 20 minutes with modern video production
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoAlso, I'm glad you became a fan! Some people mock anything that is government funded and reflexively assume private enterprise always makes a superior product. One exception of many to this I recently found is when the gf and I were watching tv and she changed the station to the Science Channel. My excitement was destroyed by my exponentially higher dissapointment: The tv show she wanted to watch was Ghost Hunters...on the frickin science channel!!!!
- jessriedel 9y agoI don't know a good link to a discussion of this system, but the idea of establishing quantum supremacy has been much discussed in optical systems under the title of boson sampling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson_sampling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson_sampling
- avz 9y agoI believe they talk about the computational task described in [1] (published in 2016). Note that this is somewhat contrived: it's a task defined specifically so that it is very difficult for classical computers and relatively easy for quantum computers. It is also defined in a way that ensures that a quantum computer necessary to demonstrate quantum supremacy is relatively small in terms of the number of qubits. The task is that of generating output samples from pseudo-random quantum circuits. The paper shows that the task has exponential computational complexity on classical computers and that it can be used to demonstrate quantum supremacy using a quantum computer with approximately 50 qubits. Now, the IEEE Spectrum article indicates that the team has now built a 49-qubit quantum computer and plan to use it to demonstrate quantum supremacy. EDIT: Replaced direct pdf link with the article page link. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00263 https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00263
- maxander 9y agoAm I right to read this as "the classical computer and quantum computer compete at the task of being that particular quantum computer?" Scott Aaronson is probably preparing to denounce this experiment already.
- PeterisP 9y agoNot really "that particular", but more like performing a trick explicitly designed to be feasible even for low-qubit quantum computers but unfeasible even for very powerful conventional computers attempting to emulate quantum computing. Performing such a trick demonstrates that you have a working device that can perform arbitrary quantum computations - unlike, say, the much hyped D-wave quantum annealing device.
- JCzynski 9y agoIf you'd checked the article, you would see that actually he's solidly in favor. But yes, it's basically "represent a quantum computer of this size", which we legitimately can't do classically beyond a certain size. It's not hugely useful but it's legitimate quantum supremacy, if it works.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- adamnemecek 9y agoOne thing that has been confusing me is why do quantum computers still work with bits (qubits are still bits) as opposed to waves and signals. Math is founded on continuous functions and by converting them to bits, you lose a lot of information. I've been toying with the idea photonic computing over the last couple of years and I believe that a photonic analog computer is the way forward. How do you do computation on such a computer? Dependent types -> homotopy type theory -> topology -> topological photonics.
- platz 9y agoi heard this question raised on a podcast and my understanding is that the gains from analog computing do not in favt yield orders of magnitude more efficiency, so digitization is not as much of a loss as one might think
- adamnemecek 9y agolol what podcast was this? gains from analog computing are actually really promising, and just about every opinion I've seen that said it wasn't was founded on some fundamental flaw.
- dang 9y agoWould you please edit the uncivil swipes out of your comments here? Your comment would be just fine without the snarky first three letters.
- adamnemecek 9y agoThat actually wasn't snarky but I see how it could be taken that way. I was surprised that there's a podcast on this, I was legitimately curious what podcast this was. I have very little material that deals with this, and it's surprising that there's a podcast on this.
- dang 9y ago
- dwringer 9y ago> _Google hopes prove ..._ I am guessing that was meant to be "hopes _to_ prove", or else we're at the point now where for Google, merely hoping for something to be true makes it true. Or are we using the mechanism of "hope" to delineate between classical computers and quantum computers, one of which we now consider Google to be?
- frostmatthew 9y agoWhen I submitted it I used the article's title Google Plans to Demonstrate the Supremacy of Quantum Computing, apparently one of the mods felt this was an improvement /shrug
- dang 9y agoThe HN guidelines say "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait". This article's title is grandiose enough to count as linkbait. In such cases, mods change titles, nearly always using either a subtitle or a representative phrase from the article. The reason we do this, btw, is that if we don't, the comment threads fill up with shallow objections to the title. We don't always get it 100% right, of course, and are pleased when readers suggest better. But the basic principle is that, on HN, a good title is accurate, neutral, and uses the article's own language.
- dwringer 9y agoI hope you don't consider mine a shallow objection. I rather liked the change :)
- dang 9y agoNot at all, I meant that if the title above were still "Google Plans to Demonstrate the Supremacy of Quantum Computing", there would be complaints about linkbait and whatnot. Of course the complaints are usually justified on their own terms, but they're predictable and therefore tedious, and they take threads way off topic.
- 9y ago