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What are some good examples? The one a few years ago where Google declared "quantum supremacy" sounded a lot like simulating a noisy circuit by implementing a

by xscott 2y ago

What are some good examples? The one a few years ago where Google declared "quantum supremacy" sounded a lot like simulating a noisy circuit by implementing a noisy circuit. And that seems a lot like simulating the falling particles and their collisions in an hour glass by using a physical hour glass.

dekhn 2y ago
The only one I can think of is simulating physical systems, especially quantum ones. Google's supremacy claim didn't impress me; besides being a computationally uninteresting problem, it really just motivated the supercomputer people to improve their algorithms. To really establish this field as a viable going concern probably needs somebody to do "something" with quantum that is experimentally verifiable but not computable classically, and is a useful computation.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  That is equivalent to proving BQP ≠ P. We currently don't know that any problem even exists that can be solved efficiently (in polynomial time) by quantum computers but not by classical computers.
EvgeniyZh 2y ago
I wrote a long-ish comment about what you can expect of QC just yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42212878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42212878
- xscott 2y ago
  Thank you for the link. I appreciate the write-up. This sentence though: > breaking some cryptography schemes it not exactly the most exciting thing IMHO You're probably right that we'll migrate to QC-resistant algorithms before this happens, but if factoring was solved today, I think it would be very exciting :-)
  - EvgeniyZh 2y ago
    I think it would be very __impactful__, but it is not really useful for humanity, rather opposite.
    - xscott 2y ago
      Who knows. "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future", but it might be a good thing to accelerate switching to new crypto algorithms sooner, leaving fewer secrets to be dug up later.

by xscott 2y ago

dekhn 2y ago

The only one I can think of is simulating physical systems, especially quantum ones. Google's supremacy claim didn't impress me; besides being a computationally uninteresting problem, it really just motivated the supercomputer people to improve their algorithms. To really establish this field as a viable going concern probably needs somebody to do "something" with quantum that is experimentally verifiable but not computable classically, and is a useful computation.

SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
That is equivalent to proving BQP ≠ P. We currently don't know that any problem even exists that can be solved efficiently (in polynomial time) by quantum computers but not by classical computers.

EvgeniyZh 2y ago

I wrote a long-ish comment about what you can expect of QC just yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42212878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42212878

xscott 2y ago
Thank you for the link. I appreciate the write-up. This sentence though: > breaking some cryptography schemes it not exactly the most exciting thing IMHO You're probably right that we'll migrate to QC-resistant algorithms before this happens, but if factoring was solved today, I think it would be very exciting :-)
- EvgeniyZh 2y ago
  I think it would be very __impactful__, but it is not really useful for humanity, rather opposite.
  - xscott 2y ago
    Who knows. "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future", but it might be a good thing to accelerate switching to new crypto algorithms sooner, leaving fewer secrets to be dug up later.