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Fascinating. It seems the Chinese scientists achieved this Quantum Supremacy at normal room temperatures, and using standard industrial components used elsewhe

Fascinating. It seems the Chinese scientists achieved this Quantum Supremacy at normal room temperatures, and using standard industrial components used elsewhere in commercial telecom equipment. At first, I thought this was more of a type of single-use quantum circuit, where you can only use it to solve this one problem. And you'd have to build a new rig to solve another function. And on and on, until you sorta get a general purpose super quantum computer, with all these individual rigs solving different functions, that can finally do useful work. Whereas the Google Sycamore is more of a general purpose quantum computer that can be reprogrammed to solve anything. But, this guy believes that this might be a first step to a universal photonic quantum computer. The last part was incredible. They verified the results on a supercomputer, and went up to n=40. But the supercomputer time costed them $400,000. So they decided to stop there. Public Key Crypto Code breaking, here we come. Setec Astronomy [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GutJf9umD9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GutJf9umD9c

api 6y ago
Most cryptographers think we will see RSA and EC type public key code breaking at least for small keys (<=1024 for RSA, <256 for EC) within 10-15 years. Once that happens we can more or less consider classical asymmetric crypto unsafe since we can assume deep-pocketed adversaries (NSA, FSB, China, etc.) may be ahead of what is publicly disclosed. That's why classically computable but quantum resistant asymmetric cryptography is one of the hottest areas of crypto research right now.
- benlivengood 6y ago
  Does anyone really think the deep pockets of the TLAs haven't already done at least this well, especially with photonics at least? All the theoretical fundamentals have been known for decades. If COTS parts can do this then a focused research program begun decades ago will have already achieved what is public today. Public demonstration to me is just a proof-of-concept validating that state actors achieved parity with it quite a while ago.
  - api 6y ago
    If "Janik's black box" actually does exist, it would be among the deepest darkest secrets in the entire government. It would only be pulled out and used in extreme cases for fear of accidentally revealing evidence of its existence by breaking a code that one should not be able to break (similar to how the allies in WWII let the Germans sink a few ships rather than reveal that they could break German codes).
nullc 6y ago
> at normal room temperatures, Their optical detectors are superconducting and a lot of the apparatus is temperature controlled. (doesn't really contradict your point, but I thought it was interesting to point out).

api 6y ago

Most cryptographers think we will see RSA and EC type public key code breaking at least for small keys (<=1024 for RSA, <256 for EC) within 10-15 years. Once that happens we can more or less consider classical asymmetric crypto unsafe since we can assume deep-pocketed adversaries (NSA, FSB, China, etc.) may be ahead of what is publicly disclosed. That's why classically computable but quantum resistant asymmetric cryptography is one of the hottest areas of crypto research right now.

benlivengood 6y ago
Does anyone really think the deep pockets of the TLAs haven't already done at least this well, especially with photonics at least? All the theoretical fundamentals have been known for decades. If COTS parts can do this then a focused research program begun decades ago will have already achieved what is public today. Public demonstration to me is just a proof-of-concept validating that state actors achieved parity with it quite a while ago.
- api 6y ago
  If "Janik's black box" actually does exist, it would be among the deepest darkest secrets in the entire government. It would only be pulled out and used in extreme cases for fear of accidentally revealing evidence of its existence by breaking a code that one should not be able to break (similar to how the allies in WWII let the Germans sink a few ships rather than reveal that they could break German codes).

nullc 6y ago

> at normal room temperatures, Their optical detectors are superconducting and a lot of the apparatus is temperature controlled. (doesn't really contradict your point, but I thought it was interesting to point out).