6 ms·

First release of quantum operating system, Deltaflow

39 points by kristianpaul 6y ago

ThePhysicist 6y ago
Kudos to them, I applaud any initiative in the quantum computing space. That said I feel companies like Riverlane or Q-CTRL are way too early in the market. There are still so many open questions regarding which architecture and technology is best suited for quantum computing, and there isn't yet a single practically relevant problem that can be solved on a NISQ quantum computer (to my knowledge). Building a software company on such a shifting hardware landscape is quite bold. Having built several technology companies with novel, albeit much less cutting-edge technologies I would be very wary getting in so early into a field that's barely starting to get commercialized. But again, kudos to them for being so early in the game, I hope it'll work out for them.
- Whirl 6y ago
  I’m of a similar opinion, but with the note that QCTRL actually makes products that people want. The current state of the art in QC requires that pretty much everyone needs some kind of pulse shaping/noise reduction, which is (some of?) what QCTRL provides. Plus the quantum sensing space benefits greatly from such techniques as well. So even if quantum computing falls into a “quantum winter” it’s likely that quantum sensing will pull through and so QCTRL might survive. Those other software companies are also competing with the IBMs, Googles, and Rigettis that are also building similar software for the the hardware they’re making.
- fsh 6y ago
  To me it feels like these companies are trying to sell Kubernetes to a community that has not yet invented the vacuum tube (and might never manage to).
  - divtiwari 6y ago
    Bravo!!! Apt analogy :)
politelemon 6y ago
Who is the target audience for this, I don't imagine it's end users like me. Is it research companies, academics? I imagine you'd also need access to qubit based hardware, which isn't commercially available. Where do you source those from?
- rasz 6y ago
  Crypto startups. Just imagine the financing possibilities of Deep Learning Blockchain based Quantum powered Contract Network.
  - xondono 6y ago
    Congratulations! According to the Buzzword Bingo, you’re on the path to funding!
mellosouls 6y ago
Interesting. Very early, but somebody has to be. Good luck to them; seems a good team looking at the About section. Minor documentation note (at the risk of downvotes :) ): unless they are intending to mark their product as different, or are not talking about programs as we think of them (in which case clarification might be useful), "programme" should be "program". It's not a British vs American thing, that's how it's spelled in the UK in industry too.
mellosouls 6y ago
Interesting. Very early, but somebody has to be. Good luck to them; seems a qualified team looking at the About section. Documentation note (at the risk of downvotes :) ): unless they are intending to mark their product as different, or are not talking about programs as we think of them (in which case clarification might be useful), "programme" should be "program". It's not a British vs American thing, that's how it's spelled in the UK in the software industry too.
- mikhailfranco 6y ago
  It is a British v. American thing. As with many common spelling differences across the Pond (like -or v. -our, and -er v. -re ), the US spelling is the original, and the current British spelling is a later Francophile affectation, from a conveniently forgotten time long ago (18-19th C), when the British admired and copied French culture. It is usually computer program in British English due to US influence on modern British spelling in areas of technology, perhaps perpetuated by the tendency of hackers to prefer terse names. You continue to see TV programme and concert programme in British English. As in many things, the British prefer the principle of pragmatic de facto bottom-up evolution, based on common sense and common usage. So the OED was famously compiled by collecting fragments of real language use. Language pedants in Britain are usually ridiculed, in a similar way to those who fancy themselves as public intellectuals. Compare this with the French tendency towards dictatorial de jure top-down control, as shown by the Académie Française's specification of correct French. The rest of Europe is similar, see Royal Spanish Academy, Council for German Orthography, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators France also has a thriving industry of respected public intellectuals. Another example is the British Common Law system based on precedents in case law, compared to strict prescriptive Napoleonic Codes. Britain has no written constitution and no National Day - the Queen's Birthday is celebrated, but it's not a public holiday. Even the name and boundaries are fluid, as the full abbreviation UKGB&NI attests.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    That's an interesting and informative comment, but in the strict sense of how "program" is spelt in the UK in the intended meaning here, ultimately just background information. The American origin (which I'm well aware of) has long been the standard spelling in the software industry in the UK. The spelling in the document - insofar as computer programs are intended by "programme" - is awkward at best and wrong at worst - even in the UK - and that isn't going to do them any favours in flagship documentation. It's probably just an unfortunate oversight after a spelling checker automatically corrected the text to local spelling without context, or a (fair) assumption was made by the author if they are new to software terminology in this case. Or maybe they are really clever and are intentionally misspelling it on the assumption their target audience are high flying execs, journalists and money raisers who are also unaware...
hannob 6y ago
I feel this starts from a very wrong assumption. There is the idea floating around that in the future we'll just replace classical computers with quantum computers. But even if we skip the challenges of actually doing that, what would be the point? From what we know today quantum copmuters aren't magical computers that make everything faster. Instead there are a couple of very special problems that QCs can calculate much faster. If you keep that in mind it's clear where QCs job is: As specialized equipment doing calculations for very particular problems, e.g. for scientific use. That also means noone will likely ever need a quantum operating system. We'll just continue using "normal" operating systems that interact with specialized hardware for specialized calculations.
- prox 6y ago
  This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but predictions are notoriously hard to do. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876. "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
  - st1x7 6y ago
    I don't see how pointing out incorrect predictions from the past is constructive or helps address the question. In the same line of thought you could have collected a list of correct skeptical predictions and listed a bunch of technologies that haven't worked out.
    - prox 6y ago
      And what is the question here exactly? OC points out a couple of assumptions that are made (I agree for instance that I don’t see the QM replace classical computers anytime soon) But then also makes a few assumptions that might prove to be true or not. That is to say : we don’t know. The people who I quote in the past also had a delineated idea of what the future might entail, but it’s impossible to look very far ahead.
solotronics 6y ago
How do we measure the development of production quantum computing and it's effect on cracking hash algorithms and other cryptography? Is this even a valid concern?
- packetlost 6y ago
  We're probably decades away from Shor's algorithm. Right now we're mostly dealing in the realm of "Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum" machines (NISQ). The abstract of this paper gives a good summary of where we're at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00862 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00862 The "operating system" has little to do with accelerating that (outside of maybe cutting out some development cost + time), though in theory they can provide some algorithms and optimizations that minimize noise and decoherence.
macawfish 6y ago
Some useful context: https://www.riverlane.com/products/ https://www.riverlane.com/products/
turminal 6y ago
I wonder what prompts people to use such fonts on their websites

39 points by kristianpaul 6y ago

Kudos to them, I applaud any initiative in the quantum computing space. That said I feel companies like Riverlane or Q-CTRL are way too early in the market. There are still so many open questions regarding which architecture and technology is best suited for quantum computing, and there isn't yet a single practically relevant problem that can be solved on a NISQ quantum computer (to my knowledge). Building a software company on such a shifting hardware landscape is quite bold. Having built several technology companies with novel, albeit much less cutting-edge technologies I would be very wary getting in so early into a field that's barely starting to get commercialized. But again, kudos to them for being so early in the game, I hope it'll work out for them.

Whirl 6y ago
I’m of a similar opinion, but with the note that QCTRL actually makes products that people want. The current state of the art in QC requires that pretty much everyone needs some kind of pulse shaping/noise reduction, which is (some of?) what QCTRL provides. Plus the quantum sensing space benefits greatly from such techniques as well. So even if quantum computing falls into a “quantum winter” it’s likely that quantum sensing will pull through and so QCTRL might survive. Those other software companies are also competing with the IBMs, Googles, and Rigettis that are also building similar software for the the hardware they’re making.
fsh 6y ago
To me it feels like these companies are trying to sell Kubernetes to a community that has not yet invented the vacuum tube (and might never manage to).
- divtiwari 6y ago
  Bravo!!! Apt analogy :)

politelemon 6y ago

Who is the target audience for this, I don't imagine it's end users like me. Is it research companies, academics? I imagine you'd also need access to qubit based hardware, which isn't commercially available. Where do you source those from?

rasz 6y ago
Crypto startups. Just imagine the financing possibilities of Deep Learning Blockchain based Quantum powered Contract Network.
- xondono 6y ago
  Congratulations! According to the Buzzword Bingo, you’re on the path to funding!

mellosouls 6y ago

Interesting. Very early, but somebody has to be. Good luck to them; seems a good team looking at the About section. Minor documentation note (at the risk of downvotes :) ): unless they are intending to mark their product as different, or are not talking about programs as we think of them (in which case clarification might be useful), "programme" should be "program". It's not a British vs American thing, that's how it's spelled in the UK in industry too.

mellosouls 6y ago

Interesting. Very early, but somebody has to be. Good luck to them; seems a qualified team looking at the About section. Documentation note (at the risk of downvotes :) ): unless they are intending to mark their product as different, or are not talking about programs as we think of them (in which case clarification might be useful), "programme" should be "program". It's not a British vs American thing, that's how it's spelled in the UK in the software industry too.

mikhailfranco 6y ago
It is a British v. American thing. As with many common spelling differences across the Pond (like -or v. -our, and -er v. -re ), the US spelling is the original, and the current British spelling is a later Francophile affectation, from a conveniently forgotten time long ago (18-19th C), when the British admired and copied French culture. It is usually computer program in British English due to US influence on modern British spelling in areas of technology, perhaps perpetuated by the tendency of hackers to prefer terse names. You continue to see TV programme and concert programme in British English. As in many things, the British prefer the principle of pragmatic de facto bottom-up evolution, based on common sense and common usage. So the OED was famously compiled by collecting fragments of real language use. Language pedants in Britain are usually ridiculed, in a similar way to those who fancy themselves as public intellectuals. Compare this with the French tendency towards dictatorial de jure top-down control, as shown by the Académie Française's specification of correct French. The rest of Europe is similar, see Royal Spanish Academy, Council for German Orthography, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators France also has a thriving industry of respected public intellectuals. Another example is the British Common Law system based on precedents in case law, compared to strict prescriptive Napoleonic Codes. Britain has no written constitution and no National Day - the Queen's Birthday is celebrated, but it's not a public holiday. Even the name and boundaries are fluid, as the full abbreviation UKGB&NI attests.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  That's an interesting and informative comment, but in the strict sense of how "program" is spelt in the UK in the intended meaning here, ultimately just background information. The American origin (which I'm well aware of) has long been the standard spelling in the software industry in the UK. The spelling in the document - insofar as computer programs are intended by "programme" - is awkward at best and wrong at worst - even in the UK - and that isn't going to do them any favours in flagship documentation. It's probably just an unfortunate oversight after a spelling checker automatically corrected the text to local spelling without context, or a (fair) assumption was made by the author if they are new to software terminology in this case. Or maybe they are really clever and are intentionally misspelling it on the assumption their target audience are high flying execs, journalists and money raisers who are also unaware...

hannob 6y ago

I feel this starts from a very wrong assumption. There is the idea floating around that in the future we'll just replace classical computers with quantum computers. But even if we skip the challenges of actually doing that, what would be the point? From what we know today quantum copmuters aren't magical computers that make everything faster. Instead there are a couple of very special problems that QCs can calculate much faster. If you keep that in mind it's clear where QCs job is: As specialized equipment doing calculations for very particular problems, e.g. for scientific use. That also means noone will likely ever need a quantum operating system. We'll just continue using "normal" operating systems that interact with specialized hardware for specialized calculations.

prox 6y ago
This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but predictions are notoriously hard to do. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876. "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
- st1x7 6y ago
  I don't see how pointing out incorrect predictions from the past is constructive or helps address the question. In the same line of thought you could have collected a list of correct skeptical predictions and listed a bunch of technologies that haven't worked out.
  - prox 6y ago
    And what is the question here exactly? OC points out a couple of assumptions that are made (I agree for instance that I don’t see the QM replace classical computers anytime soon) But then also makes a few assumptions that might prove to be true or not. That is to say : we don’t know. The people who I quote in the past also had a delineated idea of what the future might entail, but it’s impossible to look very far ahead.

solotronics 6y ago

How do we measure the development of production quantum computing and it's effect on cracking hash algorithms and other cryptography? Is this even a valid concern?

packetlost 6y ago
We're probably decades away from Shor's algorithm. Right now we're mostly dealing in the realm of "Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum" machines (NISQ). The abstract of this paper gives a good summary of where we're at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00862 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00862 The "operating system" has little to do with accelerating that (outside of maybe cutting out some development cost + time), though in theory they can provide some algorithms and optimizations that minimize noise and decoherence.

macawfish 6y ago

Some useful context: https://www.riverlane.com/products/ https://www.riverlane.com/products/

turminal 6y ago

I wonder what prompts people to use such fonts on their websites