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That's great. Now next thing that needs to be solved is to make this tech available for general public use just like computers are these days. Problems that are
by ssdd 8y ago
That's great. Now next thing that needs to be solved is to make this tech available for general public use just like computers are these days. Problems that are waiting to be solved by it are very large and of huge impact.
- reaperducer 8y agoProblems that are waiting to be solved by it are very large and of huge impact I know virtually nothing about quantum computing, so can you give some examples? Whenever I've asked anyone who seemed to know anything about the field, all they can come up with is weather forecasting and simulating nuclear explosions. Not exactly "general use," as you put it. In the back of my mind, I know that quantum computing is a big deal, and we're in ENIAC days with it. But I don't have a good understanding of where it goes or why.
- adrianN 8y agoQuantum computers are extremely useful for simulating chemistry. They can do it exponentially faster than classical computers. Cheap useful quantum computers can revolutionize biology and materials science.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chrisweekly 8y agoENIAC?
- SimbaOnSteroids 8y agoOne of the first computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- techbio 8y agoProtein folding and gene research. Cure malaria, cancer, feed the world etc.
- foxes 8y agoThere are already lots of 'practical' applications in the literature. A famous one is Shor's factorisation algorithm. But there are others - everything from doing pagerank to simulating other quantum systems. Many classical algorithms, which run in ~O(poly(n)) can have an 'equivalent' quantum algorithm in ~O(log(n)) - an exponential speedup. There is still debate as to how the complexity class of problems which are efficient on a quantum computer (BQP) relate to other complexity classes. Its suspected P lies entirely within BQP. However, at least initially, I think quantum computers will be a specialized piece of equipment. Classical computing is pretty good for your average person. Quantum computers will be used for more heavy compute tasks.
- bdamm 8y agoIs Shor's an application of entanglement though?
- teraflop 8y agoYes, all non-trivial quantum computing is based on entanglement.
- zjaffee 8y agoI'd also add that the need for localized personal computing services goes down as network bandwidth increases, if there's anything that people really need quantum computers for, it's not unreasonable to suggest that they will be handled on the backend with aggregated results sent to clients as is the case for most computation today.
- moefh 8y ago> Its suspected P lies entirely within BQP. It's actually known that BQP contains P[1]. It also contains BPP. What's not known is the relationship between BQP and NP (most experts suspect there's no containment in either direction). [1] See this for an easy proof: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/f04quantum/notes/lec5/lec5.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/f04quantum/notes/...
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- kart23 8y agoDoesn't basically all encryption become meaningless with quantum computers? Remember how they always said 'it would take a billion years to crack this encryption with a computer'? Well soon we are going to have computers that don't play by the rules.
- jblow 8y agoWe all have these things in our pockets that are massive supercomputers by the standards of my college days. And we all use them just to rant at each other about political things that we in reality are totally misinformed about ... and otherwise just waste our lives. I am not sure why quantum computing is supposed to change this. Even software that is supposed to be useful is so terribly slow. Computers are between 2 and 4 orders of magnitude faster than programmers today experientially believe they are, because today’s culture of programming has rotted so thoroughly. Do you really need a quantum computer when 3 orders of magnitude are just sitting there on the table waiting to be picked up?
- ahelwer 8y agoQuantum computers won't change anything about people posting misinformed political opinions. Three orders of magnitude speedup is a constant factor. Quantum computers provide between sqrt(n) and log(n) speedup depending on the problem - for example, biochemistry simulation for improved drug designs and such. That seems worthwhile.
- Erlich_Bachman 8y ago> And we all use them just to rant at each other about political things that we in reality are totally misinformed about ... and otherwise just waste our lives. So if I decide to use the device that I have bought and invested in, to "rant" about something (to connect to other people through it, essentially), or even just connect to my loved ones sending "meaningless" information (as many I'm sure would call it), or if I choose to use it for anything else, who is to say that it's "wasting my life"? You? Why do you decide what is wasteful and what is not? Maybe all those people want to do those things? You can't say that this technology is wasted or is not used properly without also implicitly assuming moral and philosophical authority about what people should choose and not to choose with their time and other resources, including the money used to buy such devices and resources spend on developing them. Why do you assume that you can be such an authority? Of course, looking at this in another way, you definitely have the ultimate authority in this area in this one regard: where it applies to your own life. Which I guess is another way of saying that what you wrote says more about your outlook on life than on the underlying technology and its social ramifications.
- Cobord 8y agoBecause of the expense it will have to start off as QCaaS. You send the really hard part of your problem to whichever person actually has the hardware and they'll return the answer. If you are concerned with them not knowing your data, there are workarounds to that as well. So available to general public in a weaker sense.