4 ms·

Maybe not to regular developers, but definitely to physicists[0], chemists[0][1], machine learning people[1], and cryptographers. [0] - https://www.nature.com/

Maybe not to regular developers, but definitely to physicists[0], chemists[0][1], machine learning people[1], and cryptographers. [0] - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23879 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23879 [1] - https://ai.google/research/teams/applied-science/quantum/ https://ai.google/research/teams/applied-science/quantum/ - see 'Near-Term Applications'

cooljacob204 7y ago
Wouldn't the size different help with CPU density? I don't really know much about the topic but my understanding is that it could potentially be more dense then the theoretic limit of current transistor sizes.
- jerf 7y ago
  It hard to know if that theory is going to translate into reality. The machinery required for isolating the qubits, configuring the qubits for a computation, and reading out the qubits at the end may prevent very much scaling. Science fiction has hypothesized about quantum computing that involves macroscopically-sized bits of carefully constructed matter running a number of qubits best described with scientific notation, but it's not clear how one would set up problems or read anything out of such a thing.
- krastanov 7y ago
  Definitely not. Quantum computing building blocks do not have anything that makes them inherently easier to miniaturize: quite the opposite, there is enormous amount of classical hardware necessary to support a single quantum bit. Moreover, some form of "isolation" between the qubits is necessary, so you can not just pack them together. Current sizes of quantum bits: cavities are cm to mm scale; transmons and photonics can be much smaller, but nowhere near the size of modern transistors; ions need to be trapped in something and usually the scale is not better than the other options. There is the hope that qubits can be made in silicon and use lithographic technologies, but then at best we will reach the density of current CPUs (but such a thing is science fiction at the moment).
mattrp 7y ago
Isnt this everyone who is coding these days? ;)
- pferde 7y ago
  What about the vast legions of web developers?
  - ashelmire 7y ago
    I guess some consider those of us building programs that actually do something useful for a business purpose to be "fake programmers".
    - codesushi42 7y ago
      So other programmers don't build useful things? But websites are always useful?
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I eagerly await the "quantum web". Wait.. patent pending. There's probably an unreasonably large some of money to be made being able to sell that label to unwitting trend-hoppers.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

cooljacob204 7y ago

Wouldn't the size different help with CPU density? I don't really know much about the topic but my understanding is that it could potentially be more dense then the theoretic limit of current transistor sizes.

jerf 7y ago
It hard to know if that theory is going to translate into reality. The machinery required for isolating the qubits, configuring the qubits for a computation, and reading out the qubits at the end may prevent very much scaling. Science fiction has hypothesized about quantum computing that involves macroscopically-sized bits of carefully constructed matter running a number of qubits best described with scientific notation, but it's not clear how one would set up problems or read anything out of such a thing.
krastanov 7y ago
Definitely not. Quantum computing building blocks do not have anything that makes them inherently easier to miniaturize: quite the opposite, there is enormous amount of classical hardware necessary to support a single quantum bit. Moreover, some form of "isolation" between the qubits is necessary, so you can not just pack them together. Current sizes of quantum bits: cavities are cm to mm scale; transmons and photonics can be much smaller, but nowhere near the size of modern transistors; ions need to be trapped in something and usually the scale is not better than the other options. There is the hope that qubits can be made in silicon and use lithographic technologies, but then at best we will reach the density of current CPUs (but such a thing is science fiction at the moment).

mattrp 7y ago

Isnt this everyone who is coding these days? ;)

pferde 7y ago
What about the vast legions of web developers?
- ashelmire 7y ago
  I guess some consider those of us building programs that actually do something useful for a business purpose to be "fake programmers".
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    So other programmers don't build useful things? But websites are always useful?
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I eagerly await the "quantum web". Wait.. patent pending. There's probably an unreasonably large some of money to be made being able to sell that label to unwitting trend-hoppers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]