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First portable quantum computers on sale in Japan?
- valdagger 3y agoI thought quantum computing wouldn't be a thing for another few decades? What is this?
- pnemonic 3y agoBut can they run Crysis?
- defterGoose 3y agoNo, but Skyrim is coming soon.
- Drblessing 3y agoWhat about doom?
- ryanSrich 3y agoIs there any practical use for one of these at the moment? As a hobby dev, what could I do with one?
- isaacg 3y agoThey seem to be marketed for educational purposes. You could simulate them in software easily. They could be useful for research, but they're not directly useful for computing, except as a novelty.
- b112 3y agoYou could simulate them in software easily. Yes, just like you can simulate an ntsc interlaced screen in software.
- buescher 3y agoYes, if no one had actually made a useful ntsc screen.
- roywiggins 3y agoIt even comes bundled with simulation software: "Gemini Mini is a conditionally portable, entry-level 2-cubit system... The device has built-in CASTOR software, allowing it to simulate the operation of 8 qubits." Not sure what benefit you get from using real qubits vs just simulating them, even for educational purposes.
- isaacg 3y agoReal qubits have flaws, and you could experiment to see under what conditions they work better or worse, like by applying magnetic fields. Simulated qubits are presumably flawless, and so you can't experiment with them.
- defterGoose 3y agoPotentially, something like generating high quality random numbers. This assumes a great deal about the fidelity of the qubits and the control software though.
- boothby 3y agoThere is much better, faster, cheaper hardware out there to generate random numbers. Using a quantum computer as an RNG is akin to buying an airplane and using it to blow-dry a carpet.
- defterGoose 3y agoI mean, I'm not sure what else you'd literally do with it. Simulating the claimed 8 qubits would require not much classical processing power at all, unless there is something fundamental about the TRNG behavior/fidelity of qubits. Entanglement is interesting but what are you going to do other than simply demonstrate entanglement? I guess you could run Deutsch's with it. Fun. This seems like more of a teaching machine than anything.
- boothby 3y agoSmall qubits count machines could be useful for teaching about qubit operations. I can see several lab assignments based around these machine: measure the readout fidelity, measure the gate fidelity, measure T1 time, etc.
- charcircuit 3y agoModern processors already ship with hardware that enables high quality random numbers.
- sandworm101 3y agoWhen your school is trying to sell itself, "we run a quantum computer lab" is a good thing. These would appear the cheapest means of qualifying that statement in your international student brochure.
- AlexCoventry 3y agoIt's at best a joke, quite likely a scam.
- anigbrowl 3y agoNo, switch science is a legitimate parts distributor in Japan, kinda like Adafruit.
- paulddraper 3y agoKind of like the early computers.
- nradov 3y agoYou could probably compute the prime factors of 15 with one.
- isaacg 3y agoThe cubit/kubit/qubit typo does not inspire confidence in this article. Here's the items for sale, in Japanese: https://www.switch-science.com/search?type=article%2Cpage%2Cproduct&q=spinq https://www.switch-science.com/search?type=article%2Cpage%2C...*
- parl_match 3y agoFor what it's worth, the site is not from an English speaking country, and c/k/q are common points of confusion for ESL
- dvh 3y agoJapanese also don't distinct v/b and l/r so love [lav] is written as rabu (-u because with exception of -n they don't like to end word on consonant), thus "rabu songu"
- cubefox 3y agoOh, I found the apparently quite limited number of Japanese syllables interesting, and indeed: > The basic units of the Japanese writing system are syllables. Standard Japanese uses 100 distinct syllables. Of these, 5 are single vowels, 62 are consonants combined with a vowel, and 53 are consonants combined with 'y' plus a vowel. [1] Which suggests a relatively obvious possibility of a simple writing system, where learning to write and read doesn't require memorizing countless (logographic / concept based) kanji. Though kanji seem to be older. So apparently the syllable/character association was not as obvious as it seems. It's interesting that assigning syllables characters isn't really practical in Germanic/Romance languages, as there are far more than in Japanese. One source cites 15.000 out of 100.000 possible for English [2]. It's actually cool that someone came up with the consonant/vowel distinction, ages ago, which saves tons of characters, and which proved to be a big advantage (mostly over logographic writing) when the printing press took Europe by storm, while it flopped in China and Korea [3]. [1] http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/japan/japanworkbook/language/lsp.htm http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/japan/japanworkbook/language/l... [2] https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/spsci/iss/week7.php https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/spsci/iss/week7.php [3] https://erik-engheim.medium.com/why-didnt-china-become-the-world-superpower-37408d6d0616 https://erik-engheim.medium.com/why-didnt-china-become-the-w...
- codekilla 3y agoThe Quantenkoffer by qutools is an interesting kit for learning about quantum stuff [1] Also, Qiskit pulse was fun to play around with (haven't in awhile, don't know what the current capabilities are) [2] [1] https://qutools.com/quantenkoffer_science-kit/ https://qutools.com/quantenkoffer_science-kit/ [2] https://qiskit.org/documentation/apidoc/pulse.html https://qiskit.org/documentation/apidoc/pulse.html
- snapcaster 3y agoIs this a scam? I'm not asking rhetorically I actually don't understand what this thing does or who its for
- version_five 3y agoI've been hearing a few apparently earnest mentions of using quantum computers for actual application in the last bit. I think that's BS, correct? There is no demonstrated thing that current quantum computers are better at, save for possibly a contrived problem? Am I missing some advance?
- Yoric 3y agoIt's still very much a research problem, yes.
- staunton 3y agoI believe you're right. This product seems to be aimed at education. I.e., people/companies who want to play around with something resembling a quantum computer in order to learn how they might one day be useful to them. Maybe buying one also helps build an image of innovation and scientific prowess.
- klyrs 3y agoThey claim to have 2 or 3 qubits, depending on the model. Notwithstanding the people howling about Shor's and whatnot in this thread, the claims about its capabilities are entirely underwhelming.
- stubish 3y agoI can't tell if you are talking about these particular devices or quantum computing in general. Lots of research, lots of money, but still very limited use cases. This is exactly the sort of device you might need to purchase with that research money though.
- izzydata 3y agoAt least the first home computer was actually useful.
- Fatboyrunning 3y agoHad HN been around when personal computing dropped, I imagine that we could have made some attempt at a steel man argument justifying such a purpose. Even if that argument was 'hobbyists', there was something to be said. With Quantum computing, what would that be?
- NickC25 3y agoI understand why certain tech companies such as Google/MSFT or chemical research companies like Pfizer or defense companies like Lockheed have quantum computers. Why are these being sold for personal use? Running Shor's algorithm probably gets boring after the second or third time. Plus, this machine simulates up to 8 qubits - what's the point of something that small?
- Yoric 3y agoBest guess? Because simulating more than 8 qubits requires lots of processing power.
- reikonomusha 3y ago26 qubits requires 1 GB of memory to simulate.
- AntonCTO 3y agoI won't believe in it until it proves to solve one of the known NP problems in polynomial time.
- scott-smith_us 3y agoI noticed that "qubit" is spelled at least two different ways, and both of them are incorrect ("cubit" and "Kubit").