3 ms·

I wrote a paper in highschool so take this with a grain of salt basically the idea is have truly parallel programming instead of having concurrent ones the abil

by Radzell 14y ago

I wrote a paper in highschool so take this with a grain of salt basically the idea is have truly parallel programming instead of having concurrent ones the ability of the qubit to solve for multiple states means they can solve for multiple problems at the same time while conventional computing seems parallel whats really happening is that calculation are switching states so fast they feel parallel. If I am wrong someone correct me.

exit 14y ago
did you also refrain from using punctuation in your report?
buu700 14y ago
Yeah, that's completely off (it would be a more apt description of the distinction between multiple cores and hyperthreading). The important characteristic of quantum computation is not that it's faster or more parallel than classical computation, but that it's a generalisation of classical computation. The same way that classical mechanics describes a subset of quantum mechanics rather than disjoint phenomena, all current classical CPUs are technically "quantum" CPUs (the best kind of quantum CPUs!). So, what does this mean? Well, for all the software we have today, and for almost everything we know how to code today, absolutely nothing; in fact, most of what we can do on classical computers will be slower simply because it will be quite some time before a quantum computer is anywhere near as well-engineered as, say, a Core i7 – especially when you take into account that the properties of quantum mechanics make this engineering not only different but also significantly more difficult. What we do get from the computational paradigm shift, however, is a broader set of operations which allow for a broader set of algorithms. Take Grover's algorithm (the one mentioned in the article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_algorithm#Algorithm_steps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_algorithm#Algorithm_ste... If you understand the notation, what you'll see is a series of linear operations (quantum gates) being applied to vectors (qubits (classical bits are scalars)) in a quantum circuit. These can all be used to describe any operation which would be performed on, say, an x86 core (albeit more verbosely), but can also take advantage of quantum mechanical properties to manipulate non-classical information (which gets complicated to discuss). For the canonical example of how this can significantly change computation as we know it, see Shor's algorithm, which speeds up prime number factorisation from sub-exponential time to polynomial time, and thus could potentially break RSA encryption if we had a practical quantum computer): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm Aside from that, I'm sure people much smarter than I am could go on in technical depth about how, despite not really being an advancement of mythical proportions in and of itself, this new class of algorithms would be able to revolutionise areas like search, machine learning, physical/biological/chemical simulation, and so on.

by Radzell 14y ago

exit 14y ago

did you also refrain from using punctuation in your report?

buu700 14y ago

Yeah, that's completely off (it would be a more apt description of the distinction between multiple cores and hyperthreading). The important characteristic of quantum computation is not that it's faster or more parallel than classical computation, but that it's a generalisation of classical computation. The same way that classical mechanics describes a subset of quantum mechanics rather than disjoint phenomena, all current classical CPUs are technically "quantum" CPUs (the best kind of quantum CPUs!). So, what does this mean? Well, for all the software we have today, and for almost everything we know how to code today, absolutely nothing; in fact, most of what we can do on classical computers will be slower simply because it will be quite some time before a quantum computer is anywhere near as well-engineered as, say, a Core i7 – especially when you take into account that the properties of quantum mechanics make this engineering not only different but also significantly more difficult. What we do get from the computational paradigm shift, however, is a broader set of operations which allow for a broader set of algorithms. Take Grover's algorithm (the one mentioned in the article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_algorithm#Algorithm_steps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_algorithm#Algorithm_ste... If you understand the notation, what you'll see is a series of linear operations (quantum gates) being applied to vectors (qubits (classical bits are scalars)) in a quantum circuit. These can all be used to describe any operation which would be performed on, say, an x86 core (albeit more verbosely), but can also take advantage of quantum mechanical properties to manipulate non-classical information (which gets complicated to discuss). For the canonical example of how this can significantly change computation as we know it, see Shor's algorithm, which speeds up prime number factorisation from sub-exponential time to polynomial time, and thus could potentially break RSA encryption if we had a practical quantum computer): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm Aside from that, I'm sure people much smarter than I am could go on in technical depth about how, despite not really being an advancement of mythical proportions in and of itself, this new class of algorithms would be able to revolutionise areas like search, machine learning, physical/biological/chemical simulation, and so on.