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Quantum computers are modeled with extremely basic linear algebra. Quantum states are vectors and gates are matrices which multiply those vectors to get new vec
by ahelwer 6y ago
Quantum computers are modeled with extremely basic linear algebra. Quantum states are vectors and gates are matrices which multiply those vectors to get new vectors. How much simpler do you want? You can explain most of it as rotations around the unit circle which we all learn in high school or earlier.
The problem is pop science crap that tries to explain superposition and entanglement with complete word salad instead of "linear combination" and "product vector cannot be factored into tensor product of single-qbit states", respectively.
Anyway it is extremely doubtful that more programmers will need to learn how to program a quantum computer than, say, will need to learn how to program a GPU. They're both useful co-processors for very specific workloads. Programming will remain a fundamentally classical endeavor.
- weakfish 6y agoDo you know how pretentious this sounds? Not everyone outside the HN tech bubble has any idea what those words mean.
- derrick_jensen 6y agoMost advantages that quantum computing has aren't practical for most people outside "the HN tech bubble". It's meant for specialized types of high throughput computations.
- ahelwer 6y agoPopular science has been trying to explain quantum mechanics to people for well over half a century now, and it hasn't worked one time. All we got was a bunch of woo like What the Bleep do We Know?! You need math. There's no other way around it. Any understanding of quantum mechanics or computing that is not fundamentally rooted in mathematical reasoning is worse than mush.
- Lambdanaut 6y agoIt was incredibly helpful to me though. Now I feel like maybe I could actually grok quantum computing.
- j-walker 6y agoHave you seen Dave Jone's video on quantum computing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOQhdgY8aBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOQhdgY8aBM
- tlackemann 6y agoThis was a great explanation, thanks for the breakdown
- dr_dshiv 6y agoI'm not necessarily asking for better metaphors of quantum phenomena. But the opportunities or affordances of quantum computers is extremely unclear, even to experts. It's like explaining the physics of a transistor to someone and waiting for them to come up with an app design. Taking the analogy of a GPU, how would you describe what a quantum coprocessor could do for a specialist (in, say, neuroscience or material science)? What kind of datasets would be appropriate? How should they think about what can be done with quantum processing? That's where I think there is room for metaphor development.
- ahelwer 6y agoThe short answer is that all of this info is out there, but it doesn't live in pop science articles. For materials scientists the value proposition is clear: quantum computers will enable efficient quantum chemistry simulations. Here is an overview paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.10402 https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.10402