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Can't quantum computers be simulated on classical computers? Doesn't that mean that any problem solvable by a quantum computer can be solved by a classical comp
by supermdguy 8y ago
Can't quantum computers be simulated on classical computers? Doesn't that mean that any problem solvable by a quantum computer can be solved by a classical computer, given enough resources? If so, isn't the headline that "Only Quantum Computers Will Ever Be Able to Solve" misleading?
I don't know much about this subject, so I'm assuming one of my assumptions is wrong.
- jacobolus 8y ago> Can't quantum computers be simulated on classical computers? The simulation gets exponentially slow, to the point that the fastest classical computers we have are not practical for simulating even modestly sized quantum systems.
- zakk 8y agoRegarding (a), the approximation can be made as good as you want. However you are right on (b) it gets exponentially slow.
- charleslmunger 8y agoThey can be simulated on classical computers, but in exponential time. In general, you need 2^n bits to represent n qubits. You can see this in the case of a basic quantum gate, the hadamard gate: H(a) produces a qubit with equal probably of being 1 or 0 if observed; H(H(a)) will always return the original value of A. Doing this to an entangled vector of qubits, performing another transform, then hadamard again produces a quantum circuit that takes an impractical number of classical bits to simulate.
- monktastic1 8y agoYes; the title should probably include the word "efficiently."