Ok, so I'm not sure what here _really_ benefited from a quantum computer. I recognize that most folk on HN are concerned about QC applied to exact solutions (w

Ok, so I'm not sure what here _really_ benefited from a quantum computer. I recognize that most folk on HN are concerned about QC applied to exact solutions (which realistically just means breaking crypto), but I'm more interested in QC for analog problem solving. A real issue you have with digital computers is that they are fundamentally discrete. This means emulating or simulating analog systems (aka the real world) devolves to re-running the same simulation innumerable times and then basically averaging them. The benefit of a QC is that you _should_, in an idealized world, require many fewer runs to get an accurate final representation of the result. If you go to YouTube you can find many examples of analog computers - often artillery and similar - and I think QC have the potential to offer some real gains in scientific computing by making it possible to create programmable analog computers which haven't really existed in the past.