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Normal computers would have suffered the same fate if they were only good for scientific calculations. Computer revolution was funded by demand in business, ga
by nabla9 4y ago
Normal computers would have suffered the same fate if they were only good for scientific calculations.
Computer revolution was funded by demand in business, gaming and automation. It's the cash flow that funds long term R&D. Not potential benefit.
There is no such demand for quantum computers. Everyday problems have too small complexity for them to be useful even if algorithm exists.
I suspect that computational biochemistry will have funders from drug firms and companies doing materials science to keep funding the research for quantum computing, but the total sum will not be billions per year like it was in computer revolution.
- varjag 4y agoClassical computers appeared and for the first decade existed purely because of scientific demand. Gaming and business were secondary effects.
- nabla9 4y agoScientific demand is enough to start something, not sustain huge annual investments. Global supercomputer market is roughly $6-7 billion. Nvidia, AMD together spend more into R&D than the whole market has sales. Scientific use is minuscule compared to business and entertainment needs. Quantum computers research gets millions or maybe few tens of millions funding. That's not enough.