6 ms·

Google expected to achieve quantum supremacy in 2019

58 points by kurthr 7y ago

dvduval 7y ago
Supremacy is the word that seems awkward here. "We might have something to show by the end of the year" seems to fall a little short of supremacy. And there is something about a double exponential rate? It still seems like we have a double exponential rate of "might show something". Of course I do look forward to seeing the quantum computer playing chess or something.
- jchw 7y ago
  Quantum supremacy is actually a more specific concept than you might be thinking: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy
- hedora 7y ago
  There is such a thing as a double exponential rate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_exponential_function https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_exponential_function If their claims are correct, using the Wikipedia example, if they are as fast as a cell phone in year one, then they should be faster than something like a million of the biggest super computer in year two. In year three, the incremental improvement will be incomprehensibly faster. So, they are making some pretty strong claims. Their current claims are definitely stronger than the ones that led to the AI winter. (edit: and, if it could do physical simulation poorly in year one, by year four or five, it would be simulating an incalculable number of universes starting from the Big Bang, at much faster than real-time. I guess they could then recursively contain comparable quantum computers, which would progress even faster than the host machine?)
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    As shown in the graph in your link, the double exponential has a sharper "elbow" and therefore it seems to me that if you start at the same y-value, then the double exponential will lag behind the single one for a period of time, which in practice might be any length.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Some boob at google's QC group overfit 3 data points, two of which were questionable, and called it a "law" named after himself. I look forward to people attempting to justify why this is still a "law" when there is still no quantum supremacy 10 years from now...
  - lowdose 7y ago
    >Nevin’s Law is currently more of an affectionate term for a rule coined by Google‘s Hartmut Nevin. At the company’s Spring Quantum Symposium this May, Nevin made the claim that quantum systems are increasing in performance at a doubly-exponential rate. This means, rather than doubling in performance with successive iterations as was the case with classical computers and Moore’s Law, quantum technology is increasing in performance at a much more dramatic rate. It took 50 years to go from punch card systems to iPhones: if Nevin’s Law is true we’ll see quantum systems increase in a fraction of that time. What a character!
wernercd 7y ago
Somewhere out there... Skynet is gestating. What an exciting time to be alive.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Let's say I'm not Google or IBM. Once the seal breaks, so speak, what type of resources will I need to get involved in quantum computing? And what are some of the possible nefarious things I might dabble in? Is quantum computing going to replace nuclear weapons as an uncontainable force to be feared?
- pstuart 7y ago
  > what are some of the possible nefarious things I might dabble in? My concern is breaking today's crypto so only the big kids can have it. I've no idea if this is a real worry -- lot's of smart people here could probably address that....
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Being quantum-safe is mostly a matter of switching to hash functions and doubling the sizes. A total reworking but not a permanent break.
    - Bombthecat 7y ago
      But all your old stuff will be basically public. As someone I knew pit it: no one cares about financial stuff from two years ago. Or even last year. But all your healthcare and private data is very very interesting!
      - tylerl 7y ago
        It's not that interesting though. I mean, it's not 100% worthless information, but it's not as valuable as people pretend. Especially if the legal environment continues in the direction it is going today, private data (especially medical data) becomes pretty devoid of monetary value if not legally obtained, and even becomes a liability. The threat of Big Companies spending billions on cracking your encryption for filthy lucre is pretty much an unrealistic fantasy.
avsteele 7y ago
I used to do ion-trap based quantum computing research but I've been out of the field since 2009. It's great there's multiple large entities investing in quantum computing. Honestly I had been getting pretty skeptical on any of the approaches (ion tap, superconducting, neutral atom traps etc...) because it seemed like little progress was being made. I wish I wish there was more here to go on. There's nothing 'new' here in the actual article I can see, except an extrapolation from a trend observed for VERY low #'s of qubits forward; seems like the shakiest kind of speculation. Quantum simulations see like the lowest hanging fruit for useful computation out of these low-qubit systems; I look forward to seeing if they can use their system to solve some currently intractable problems!
- arcticbull 7y ago
  I took some courses on quantum computing in college, and my takeaway at the time was all modern approaches to quantum computing are slower (effectively, and worse in almost every case in terms of algorithmic complexity) than their classical counterparts. Are we any closer to getting a quantum implementation of Shor's algorithm? My understanding is that none of D-wave's systems for instance are anywhere close to implementing Shor, and I treat that as my "are we there yet" test. I really enjoyed the classes, but haven't kept up with advancements in the space in really any way.
  - boothby 7y ago
    > My understanding is that none of D-wave's systems for instance are anywhere close to implementing Shor, and I treat that as my "are we there yet" test. Do you care about the algorithm, or the result? Currently we can factor 11-bit semiprimes fairly reliably, and our hardware is capable of running 16-bit problems. But no, it's not Shor's algorithm. It's conceptually much simpler: implement a multiplication circuit, clamp the output, anneal to find the inputs. Despite not being Shor's algorithm, we've yet to see a competitor demonstrate anything close on the factoring problem. There's a strange thing in quantum computing happening right now. Certain people believe that there's only one kind of quantum computing, because it's got a provable speedup under yet-unobtainable assumptions. Adiabatic quantum computing, under a similarly unobtainable set of assumptions, can run the same algorithms, polynomially equivalent in time and space. But gate-model gets all the hype. And speaking of hype, 2017 just called. https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/google-plans-to-demonstrate-the-supremacy-of-quantum-computing https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/google-plans-to...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
singularity2001 7y ago
Reading the current Science article on this topic I got the impression that ‘quantum advantage’ might be a more reasonable first goal. that is we are still waiting for a quantum computer which can perform better than an ordinary computer in a single restricted setting. Also I was a little bit shocked that even with 16 Qbit those systems already show a significant error rate (I think up to 50%) My skepticism was confirmed by estimates in the same article of the Quantum supremacy still being decades away. So I’m a little bit confused about the current announcement but fortunately it is easily falsifiable... let’s wait for 2020
imtringued 7y ago
If that's true then why not keep it secret for a few more months until you are confident to release it outright? This is definitively going to be underwhelming.
credit_guy 7y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears to me quantum supremacy cannot be proven empirically, only theoretically. Quantum supremacy means you can prove that a quantum computer performs task A faster than any classical computer could do it. Not faster than a classical computer currently does it. For example, Schor's algorithm can factorize in polynomial time and classical factorization takes superpolynomial time. The problem is that it's not easy at all to show classical factorization is superpolynomial, and some people actually think there's a high likelihood it's actually polynomial. So, quantum supremacy is pretty much theoretical CS in the area of lower bounds for classical algorithmic problems.

58 points by kurthr 7y ago

Supremacy is the word that seems awkward here. "We might have something to show by the end of the year" seems to fall a little short of supremacy. And there is something about a double exponential rate? It still seems like we have a double exponential rate of "might show something". Of course I do look forward to seeing the quantum computer playing chess or something.

jchw 7y ago
Quantum supremacy is actually a more specific concept than you might be thinking: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy
hedora 7y ago
There is such a thing as a double exponential rate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_exponential_function https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_exponential_function If their claims are correct, using the Wikipedia example, if they are as fast as a cell phone in year one, then they should be faster than something like a million of the biggest super computer in year two. In year three, the incremental improvement will be incomprehensibly faster. So, they are making some pretty strong claims. Their current claims are definitely stronger than the ones that led to the AI winter. (edit: and, if it could do physical simulation poorly in year one, by year four or five, it would be simulating an incalculable number of universes starting from the Big Bang, at much faster than real-time. I guess they could then recursively contain comparable quantum computers, which would progress even faster than the host machine?)
- perl4ever 7y ago
  As shown in the graph in your link, the double exponential has a sharper "elbow" and therefore it seems to me that if you start at the same y-value, then the double exponential will lag behind the single one for a period of time, which in practice might be any length.
scottlocklin 7y ago
Some boob at google's QC group overfit 3 data points, two of which were questionable, and called it a "law" named after himself. I look forward to people attempting to justify why this is still a "law" when there is still no quantum supremacy 10 years from now...
- lowdose 7y ago
  >Nevin’s Law is currently more of an affectionate term for a rule coined by Google‘s Hartmut Nevin. At the company’s Spring Quantum Symposium this May, Nevin made the claim that quantum systems are increasing in performance at a doubly-exponential rate. This means, rather than doubling in performance with successive iterations as was the case with classical computers and Moore’s Law, quantum technology is increasing in performance at a much more dramatic rate. It took 50 years to go from punch card systems to iPhones: if Nevin’s Law is true we’ll see quantum systems increase in a fraction of that time. What a character!

wernercd 7y ago

Somewhere out there... Skynet is gestating. What an exciting time to be alive.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Let's say I'm not Google or IBM. Once the seal breaks, so speak, what type of resources will I need to get involved in quantum computing? And what are some of the possible nefarious things I might dabble in? Is quantum computing going to replace nuclear weapons as an uncontainable force to be feared?

pstuart 7y ago
> what are some of the possible nefarious things I might dabble in? My concern is breaking today's crypto so only the big kids can have it. I've no idea if this is a real worry -- lot's of smart people here could probably address that....
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Being quantum-safe is mostly a matter of switching to hash functions and doubling the sizes. A total reworking but not a permanent break.
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    But all your old stuff will be basically public. As someone I knew pit it: no one cares about financial stuff from two years ago. Or even last year. But all your healthcare and private data is very very interesting!
    - tylerl 7y ago
      It's not that interesting though. I mean, it's not 100% worthless information, but it's not as valuable as people pretend. Especially if the legal environment continues in the direction it is going today, private data (especially medical data) becomes pretty devoid of monetary value if not legally obtained, and even becomes a liability. The threat of Big Companies spending billions on cracking your encryption for filthy lucre is pretty much an unrealistic fantasy.

avsteele 7y ago

I used to do ion-trap based quantum computing research but I've been out of the field since 2009. It's great there's multiple large entities investing in quantum computing. Honestly I had been getting pretty skeptical on any of the approaches (ion tap, superconducting, neutral atom traps etc...) because it seemed like little progress was being made. I wish I wish there was more here to go on. There's nothing 'new' here in the actual article I can see, except an extrapolation from a trend observed for VERY low #'s of qubits forward; seems like the shakiest kind of speculation. Quantum simulations see like the lowest hanging fruit for useful computation out of these low-qubit systems; I look forward to seeing if they can use their system to solve some currently intractable problems!

arcticbull 7y ago
I took some courses on quantum computing in college, and my takeaway at the time was all modern approaches to quantum computing are slower (effectively, and worse in almost every case in terms of algorithmic complexity) than their classical counterparts. Are we any closer to getting a quantum implementation of Shor's algorithm? My understanding is that none of D-wave's systems for instance are anywhere close to implementing Shor, and I treat that as my "are we there yet" test. I really enjoyed the classes, but haven't kept up with advancements in the space in really any way.
- boothby 7y ago
  > My understanding is that none of D-wave's systems for instance are anywhere close to implementing Shor, and I treat that as my "are we there yet" test. Do you care about the algorithm, or the result? Currently we can factor 11-bit semiprimes fairly reliably, and our hardware is capable of running 16-bit problems. But no, it's not Shor's algorithm. It's conceptually much simpler: implement a multiplication circuit, clamp the output, anneal to find the inputs. Despite not being Shor's algorithm, we've yet to see a competitor demonstrate anything close on the factoring problem. There's a strange thing in quantum computing happening right now. Certain people believe that there's only one kind of quantum computing, because it's got a provable speedup under yet-unobtainable assumptions. Adiabatic quantum computing, under a similarly unobtainable set of assumptions, can run the same algorithms, polynomially equivalent in time and space. But gate-model gets all the hype. And speaking of hype, 2017 just called. https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/google-plans-to-demonstrate-the-supremacy-of-quantum-computing https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/google-plans-to...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

singularity2001 7y ago

Reading the current Science article on this topic I got the impression that ‘quantum advantage’ might be a more reasonable first goal. that is we are still waiting for a quantum computer which can perform better than an ordinary computer in a single restricted setting. Also I was a little bit shocked that even with 16 Qbit those systems already show a significant error rate (I think up to 50%) My skepticism was confirmed by estimates in the same article of the Quantum supremacy still being decades away. So I’m a little bit confused about the current announcement but fortunately it is easily falsifiable... let’s wait for 2020

imtringued 7y ago

If that's true then why not keep it secret for a few more months until you are confident to release it outright? This is definitively going to be underwhelming.

credit_guy 7y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears to me quantum supremacy cannot be proven empirically, only theoretically. Quantum supremacy means you can prove that a quantum computer performs task A faster than any classical computer could do it. Not faster than a classical computer currently does it. For example, Schor's algorithm can factorize in polynomial time and classical factorization takes superpolynomial time. The problem is that it's not easy at all to show classical factorization is superpolynomial, and some people actually think there's a high likelihood it's actually polynomial. So, quantum supremacy is pretty much theoretical CS in the area of lower bounds for classical algorithmic problems.