3 ms·

Are there any credible opinions on whether quantum computers will experience Moore’s Law-like exponential growth or not?

blattimwind 9y ago
Moore's Law was based on past experiences, understanding of the processes and deductions about what future issues are likely to be based on current trends. My gut feeling is that this question right now is like asking for Moore's Law in 1950.
- neltnerb 9y ago
  I think it's closer to the 90s. The tooling to make very small features consistently already exists at good enough performance and they can fabricate much of this with the same systems used for traditional chips. Not the same materials being deposited, but they don't have to invent x-ray lithography and CVD/FIB/E-Beam Lithography/ALD/etc. The hard part is figuring out the best general engineering approach, i.e. what to make the qubits out of, how to entangle them, what materials to use. Once you figure that out and do small demonstration units I'd fully expect the right design to be scalable quickly. But the actual production of the right design should be less of a barrier. Still a barrier, but nowhere near 50s levels.
Myrmornis 9y ago
Serious question: Why would it? Isn’t “Moore’s Law” just an empirical observation about late 20th century technology that is trotted out in front of undergraduates, confusing them about what a “law” even is? There’s not a theoretical reason to expect it to apply to any other information systems is it?
- addicted 9y ago
  Moore’s law confuses the hell out of me as a kid. It went against everything I understood about what a law meant, and it made an 8-9 year old me think that there was some mystical physical forces that essentially required processing speed to increase. I couldn’t understand how that worked and for the longest time thought either I was really stupid, or the whole world had lost its mind promoting something that obviously could not be true. It took a couple of years for me to realize that it simply wasn’t a “law” in the first place and to recognize differences in academic speak and popular media.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  If I had left out the phrase "Moore's Law-like" would the question have been less controversial? It's not that uncommon for new technologies to experience exponential improvement for some period of time. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable question to ask.
tptacek 9y ago
There are credible opinions about everything, including credible opinions from experts that the laws of physics won't allow quantum computers to ever operate at the scale we're talking about here.

blattimwind 9y ago

Moore's Law was based on past experiences, understanding of the processes and deductions about what future issues are likely to be based on current trends. My gut feeling is that this question right now is like asking for Moore's Law in 1950.

neltnerb 9y ago
I think it's closer to the 90s. The tooling to make very small features consistently already exists at good enough performance and they can fabricate much of this with the same systems used for traditional chips. Not the same materials being deposited, but they don't have to invent x-ray lithography and CVD/FIB/E-Beam Lithography/ALD/etc. The hard part is figuring out the best general engineering approach, i.e. what to make the qubits out of, how to entangle them, what materials to use. Once you figure that out and do small demonstration units I'd fully expect the right design to be scalable quickly. But the actual production of the right design should be less of a barrier. Still a barrier, but nowhere near 50s levels.

Myrmornis 9y ago

Serious question: Why would it? Isn’t “Moore’s Law” just an empirical observation about late 20th century technology that is trotted out in front of undergraduates, confusing them about what a “law” even is? There’s not a theoretical reason to expect it to apply to any other information systems is it?

addicted 9y ago
Moore’s law confuses the hell out of me as a kid. It went against everything I understood about what a law meant, and it made an 8-9 year old me think that there was some mystical physical forces that essentially required processing speed to increase. I couldn’t understand how that worked and for the longest time thought either I was really stupid, or the whole world had lost its mind promoting something that obviously could not be true. It took a couple of years for me to realize that it simply wasn’t a “law” in the first place and to recognize differences in academic speak and popular media.
tlrobinson 9y ago
If I had left out the phrase "Moore's Law-like" would the question have been less controversial? It's not that uncommon for new technologies to experience exponential improvement for some period of time. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable question to ask.

tptacek 9y ago

There are credible opinions about everything, including credible opinions from experts that the laws of physics won't allow quantum computers to ever operate at the scale we're talking about here.