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Willow quantum chip demonstrates verifiable quantum advantage on hardware
- Bootvis 1y agoThis seems like an actually useful computation to do, unlike earlier results. Is that a reasonable reading of this article?
- portaouflop 1y agoNo it’s still completely useless for the real world. Also not actually verifiable
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoClassic quantum
- WXLCKNO 1y agoNow verifiably useless in real life
- einsteinx2 1y ago> demonstrates the first-ever algorithm to achieve verifiable quantum advantage on hardware. Am I crazy or have I heard this same announcement from Google and others like 5 times at this point?
- ortusdux 1y agoI'd classify this one as different as it accompanies a publication in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6
- joshuaissac 1y agoIt's the third one I am seeing from Google specifically.
- auxiliarymoose 1y agoMy understanding is that this one is "verifiable" which means you get a reproducible result (i.e. consistent result comes out of a computation that would take much longer to do classically). Non-verifiable computations include things like pulling from a hard-to-compute probability distribution (i.e. random number generator) where it is faster, but the result is inherently not the same each time.
- Veedrac 1y agoThis is as would be expected if it were real. Advantage isn't a black and white thing, because the comparison starts against 'any task done the best we know how to do using the most resources we happen to be willing to throw at it, even if we don't have a means to check that the output was correct', and ends at 'useful output you can formally verify where you have a strong reason to believe no classical algorithm would be effective.'
- corranh 1y agoMain caveat is that it’s verifiable (by them) but repeatable by others (in principle).
- portaouflop 1y agoSo actually it’s neither verifiable or repeatable in any real-works definition of the words.
- jeffhuys 1y agoThis is your second comment in this thread (as far as I’ve scrolled) saying this without an explanation. Could you elaborate on why?
- portaouflop 1y agoQuantum computing is mostly a scheme to get more grants/funding for quantum research, it doesn’t have any real world application and most likely won’t have any in the foreseeable future. Like verifiable means i can run 3x3 on any quantum computer and always get 9 as result - but quantum computers cant even do that. Don’t get me wrong; it’s very cool theoretical research, and more power to the scientist. But thinking it will have any impact on the real world in our lifetime is a pipe dream imho
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoRelated papers The idea: Quantum Computation of Molecular Structure Using Data from Challenging-To-Classically-Simulate Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Experiments https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.030345 https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuan... Verifying the result by another quantum computer (it hasn't been yet): Observation of constructive interference at the edge of quantum ergodicity https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6
- tonetheman 1y ago[dead]
- markx2 1y ago> In physics, a quantum (pl.: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. Not a big leap then.
- chuckadams 1y agoI see what you did there. Shame a lot of other people didn't.
- reader9274 1y agoAnd the quantum snake oil train keeps on going
- zippyman55 1y agoIt’s actually two trains going in opposite directions. But the quantum snake oil is always in the other train.
- Imnimo 1y agoAs with any quantum computing news, I will wait for Scott Aaronson to tell me what to think about this.
- artemonster 1y ago[flagged]
- stuartjohnson12 1y ago[flagged]
- bheadmaster 1y ago[flagged]
- lisper 1y agoWhy wait? Just go read the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6 In the last sentence of the abstract you will find: "These results ... indicate a viable path to practical quantum advantage." And in the conclusions: "Although the random circuits used in the dynamic learning demonstration remain a toy model for Hamiltonians that are of practical relevance, the scheme is readily applicable to real physical systems." So the press release is a little over-hyped. But this is real progress nonetheless (assuming the results actually hold up). [UPDATE] It should be noted that this is still a very long way away from cracking RSA. That requires quantum error correction, which this work doesn't address at all. This work is in a completely different regime of quantum computing, looking for practical applications that use a quantum computer to simulate a physical quantum system faster than a classical computer can. The hardware improvements that produced progress in this area might be applicable to QEC some day, this is not direct progress towards implementing Shor's algorithm at all. So your crypto is still safe for the time being.
- nashashmi 1y agoBefore the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect.
- Rover222 1y agoNihilism is to trendy right now
- steego 1y agoNihilism is one response to disillusionment. Another response is to come to terms with a possibly meaningless and Sisyphean reality and to keep pushing the boulder (that you care about) up the hill anyway. I’m glad the poster is concerned and/or disillusioned about the hype, hyperbole and deception associated with this type of research. It suggests he still cares.
- reaperducer 1y agoBefore the mega monopolies took over, corps used to partner with universities to conduct this kind of research. Now we have bloated salaries, rich corporations, and expensive research while having under experienced graduates. These costs will get forwarded to the consumer. The future won’t have a lot of things that we have come to expect. I don't disagree, but these days I'm happy to see any advanced research at all. Granted, too often I see the world through HN-colored glasses, but it seems like so many technological achievements are variations on getting people addicted to something in order to show them ads. Did Bellcore or Xerox PARC do a lot of university partnerships? I was into other things in those days.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoFunnily enough I remember reading a comment a week or two ago decrying the death of corporate research labs like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC
- ibejoeb 1y ago
- josefritzishere 1y agoQuantum is the new AI. It's just the new hype cycle of doom.
- jezzamon 1y agoThe barrier to entry seems a little higher than AI so it's at least a little limited in scope
- josefritzishere 1y agoNegative points? Is no one else tired of hype outweighing the science?
- fooker 1y agoCan someone explain if this is still the RCS problem or a similar one? My impression was that every problem a quantum computer solves in practice right now is basically reducible from 'simulate a quantum computer'
- seanhunter 1y agoThis is not the RCS problem or indeed anything from number theory. The announcement is about an algorithm which they are calling Quantum Echoes, where you set up the experiment, perturb one of the qbits and observe the “echoes” through the rest of the system. They use it to replicate a classical experiment in chemistry done using nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. They say they are able to reproduce the results of that conventional experiment and gather additional data which is unavailable via conventional means.
- qnleigh 1y agoThis is quite different from their previous random circuit sampling (RCS) experiments that have made headlines a few times in the past. The key difference from an applied standpoint is that the output of RCS is a random bitstring which is different every time you run the algorithm. These bitstrings are not reproducible, and also not particularly interesting, except for the fact that only a quantum computer can generate them efficiently. The new experiment generates the same result every time you run it (after a small amount of averaging). It also involves running a much more structured circuit (as opposed to a random circuit), so all-in-all, the result is much more 'under control.' As a cherry on top, the output has some connection to molecular spectroscopy. It still isn't that useful at this scale, but it is much more like the kind of thing you would hope to use a quantum computer for someday (and certainly more useful than generating random bitstrings).
- elAhmo 1y agoDefinitely not a quantum expert, but I have a feeling that news like this have been happening for more than a decade, without anything usable.
- terminalbraid 1y agoIt's what happens when companies are driven by profit rather than making accurate scientific statements that reputation is built by and further research funding is predicated on. Hyperbolic claims like this are for shareholders who aren't qualified to judge for themselves because they're interested in future money and not actual understanding. This is what happens when you delegate science to corporations.
- bobbyprograms 1y agoYeah but let’s be honest they aren’t going to be profiting off this. So maybe to help them feel they are contributing to a good cause
- seydor 1y agoIt's great funding for physics research. I don't care if it's useless, it beats spending on politics and surveillance
- ghurtado 1y agoThere's also the fact that the road to useful is littered with useless, because how else would you make progress?
- oh_my_goodness 1y agoYou could do what evolution does, and require that every version be useful. But evolution seems to require an awful lot of trial and error.
- dboreham 1y ago
- JohnHaugeland 1y agothe big problem with quantum advantage is that quantum computing is inherently error-prone and stochastic, but then they compare to classical methods that are exact let a classical computer use an error prone stochastic method and it still blows the doors off of qc this is a false comparison
- jasonthorsness 1y agoThey get the same result when they run it a second time and it matches the classical result; this is their key achievement (in addition to the speed).
- krastanov 1y agoStochasticity (randomness) is pervasively used in classical algorithms that one compares to. That is nothing new and has always been part of comparisons. "Error prone" hardware is not "a stochastic resource". Error prone hardware does not provide any value to computation.
- qnleigh 1y agoYes the claims here allow the classical computer to use a random number generator.
- ashleyn 1y agoWe're all asking it: any impact on AES?
- seanhunter 1y agoThis is a chemistry experiment, so no.
- jonathanstrange 1y agoThe rule of thumb is that a working quantum computer that can run Grover's algorithm reduces the security of a symmetric cipher to half of its key size. That is, AES-128 should be considered to have a 64 bit key size, which is why it's not considered "quantum-safe." Edit: An effective key space of 2^64 is not secure according to modern-day standards. It was secure at the times of DES.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y agoAES-128 is quantum safe (more or less). 64 bit security in the classical domain isn't safe because you can parallelize across 2^20 computers trivially. Grover gives you 2^64 AES operations on a quantum coputer (probably ~2^70 gates or so before error correction or ~2^90 after error correction) that can't be parallelized efficiently. AES-128 is secure for the next century (but you might as well switch to aes-256 because why not)
- msm_ 1y agoIs AES-256 more quantum resistant? It still has 16byte block size, so intuitively it should be equally vulnerable to Grover.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y agoGrover's algorithm is sqrt(N) wrt domain size and the key is part of the domain of the function.
- dlandis 1y ago> Quantum computing-enhanced NMR could become a powerful tool in drug discovery, helping determine how potential medicines bind to their targets, or in materials science for characterizing the molecular structure of new materials like polymers, battery components or even the materials that comprise our quantum bits (qubits) There is a section in the article about future real world application, but I feel like these articles about quantum "breakthroughs" are almost always deliberately packed with abstruse language. As a result I have no sense about whether these suggested real world applications are a few years away or 50+ years away. Does anyone?
- jpadkins 1y ago> As a result I have no sense about whether these suggested real world applications are a few years away or 50+ years away. Does anyone? not really. but that doesn't mean it's not worth striving for. Breakthrough to commercial application are notoriously hard to predict. The only way to find out is to keep pushing at the frontier.
- kantbtrue 1y ago“13,000× faster” sounds huge, but I wonder what it’s being compared to. Quantum speedups are always tricky to measure
- jonathanstrange 1y agoThe article states: “...13,000 times faster on Willow than the best classical algorithm on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers...” I agree it's not very precise without knowing which of the world's fastest supercomputers they're talking about, but there was no need to leave out this tidbit.
- jasonthorsness 1y agoThe paper talks only about the Frontier supercomputer which is #2 on Top500. But I think it was an analysis rather than them actually running it.
- jonathanstrange 1y agoI was being sarcastic because 13,000 times faster is 4 orders of magnitude faster so it doesn't matter to which supercomputer it is compared.
- nicce 1y agoI don’t understand how these papers get accepted
- cannonpalms 1y agoThe field is nascent. The bar is not static.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jasonthorsness 1y ago"surpassing even the fastest classical supercomputers (13,000x faster)" "Quantum verifiability means the result can be repeated on our quantum computer — or any other of the same caliber — to get the same answer, confirming the result." "The results on our quantum computer matched those of traditional NMR, and revealed information not usually available from NMR, which is a crucial validation of our approach." It certainly seems like this time, there finally is a real advantage?
- seanhunter 1y agoI’ve only skimmed the paper but it seems like the “information not usually available” from NMR is the Jacobian and Hessian of the Hamiltonian of the system. So basically you’re able to go directly from running the quantum experiment to being able to simulate the dynamics of the underlying system, because the Jacobian and Hessian are the first and second partial derivatives of the system with respect to all of its parameters in matrix form.
- i-con 1y agoNotice how they say "quantum advantage" not "supremacy" and "a (big) step toward real-world applications". So actually just another step as always. And I'm left to doubt if the classic algorithm used for comparison was properly optimised.
- ccppurcell 1y agoI skimmed the paper so might have missed something, but iiuc there is no algorithm used for comparison. They did not run some well defined algorithm on some benchmark instances, they estimated the cost of simulating the circuits "through tensor network contraction" - I quote here not to scare but because this is where my expertise runs out.
- streptomycin 1y agoFWIW "quantum advantage" and "quantum supremacy" are synonyms, some people just prefer the former because the latter reminds them of "white supremacy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy#Criticism_of_the_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy#Criticism_of...
- i-con 1y agoGood point, I had no idea. I actually thought they just restrained themselves this time :D
- kmeisthax 1y agoI'll believe quantum computing exists when someone releases the factors of an RSA or DSA keypair with economic value, or at least a keypair not generated by the same people factoring it. Something like the code signing keys for Apple's boot ROM, or the root key of a well-trusted CA. It doesn't even have to be their current keys, it can be something older / shorter, as long as it's outside the time horizon of classical factoring.
- aantix 1y agoIs Bitcoin in jeopardy?
- marginalx 1y agoFinally some good news to the crypto madness!
- guerrilla 1y agoWe can only hope.
- udev4096 1y ago[flagged]
- logtrees 1y agoI don't consider the current system to be worthless. In fact, it functions remarkably well. There is certainly room for additional substrate layers though, and Bitcoin being digital or electronic gold and Ethereum being an e-steam engine or e-computer make for a powerful combination for applications together. I agree that the crowd here has historically not understood, or wanted to understand, the underlying protocols and what is possible. A bizarre kind of hubris perhaps, or maybe just a response to how the first iterations of a web2.5 or web3.0 were...admittedly more mired in a kind of marketing hype that was not as reflective of what is possible and sustainable in the space due to there not being realistic web and engineering muscle at the forefront of the hype. I think this current cycle is going to change that though. The kinds of projects spinning up are truly massive, innovative, and interesting. Stay tuned!
- udev4096 1y ago[flagged]
- logtrees 1y agoWhat is it about then? I'm not spreading propaganda - I'm maximally truth seeking and approaching things from a technical/economic/governance point of view and not an ideological one per se. Though ideology shapes everything, what I mean is that I'm not ideologically predisposed towards a conclusion on things. For me what matters is the core, truthy aspects of a given subject.
- TeeMassive 1y agoThe last time I heard a similar news from Google, it turned out they were solving a quantum phenomenon using a quantum phenomenon. It seems to be the same pattern here. Not to say it's not progress, but kind of feels like overhyped.
- refulgentis 1y agoIdk. I get this is the median take across many comments, I don’t mean to be disagreeable with a crowd. But I don’t know why using quantum phenomena is a sign something’s off. It’s a quantum computer! But I know something is off with this take if it didn’t strike you that way.
- fwip 1y agoTo me, it matters because it's a sign that it might not be particularly transferable as a method of computation. A wind tunnel is a great tool for solving aerodynamics and fluid flow problems, more efficiently than a typical computer. But we don't call it a wind-computer, because it's not a useful tool outside of that narrow domain. The promise of quantum computing is that it can solve useful problems outside the quantum realm - like breaking traditional encryption.
- refulgentis 1y agoGood point, I guess that's why I find this comments section boring and not representative of the HN I've known for 16 years: there's a sort of half-remembering it wasn't powerful enough to do something plainly and obviously useful yesterday. Then, we ignore today, and launder that into a gish-gallop of free-association, torturing the meaning of words to shoehorn in the idea that all the science has it wrong and inter alia, the quantum computer uses quantum phenomena to computer so it might be a fake useless computer, like a wind tunnel. shrugs It's a really unpleasant thing to read, reminds me of the local art school dropout hanging on my ear about crypto at the bar at 3 am in 2013. I get that's all people have to reach for, but personally, I'd rather not inflict my free-association on the world when I'm aware I'm half-understanding, fixated on the past when discussing something current, and I can't explain the idea I have as something concrete and understandable even when I'm using technical terms.
- tiahura 1y agoCan it factor 21?
- FabHK 1y agoSo, "verifiable" here means "we ran it twice and got the same result"? > Quantum verifiability means the result can be repeated on our quantum computer — or any other of the same caliber — to get the same answer, confirming the result.
- refulgentis 1y agoSounds like N, not 2
- EvgeniyZh 1y agoIt is not very clear from the text and from what I can say there is no "verifiability" concept in the papers they link. I think what they are trying to do is to contrast these to previous quantum advantage experiments in the following sense. The previous experiments involve sampling from some distribution, which is believed to be classically hard. However, it is a non-trivial question whether you succeed or fail in this task. Having perfect sampler from the same distribution won't allow you to easily verify the samples. On the other hand these experiments involve measuring some observable, i.e., the output is just a number and you could compare it to the value obtained in a different way (one a different or same computer or even some analog experimental system). Note that these observables are expectation values of the samples, but in the previous experiments since the circuits are random, all the expectation values are very close to zero and it is impossible to actually resolve them from the experiment. Disclaimer: this is my speculation about what they mean because they didn't explain it anywhere from what I can see.
- nine_k 1y agoIt means that they transcended the "works on my machine" stage, and can reliably run a quantum algorithm on more than one different quantum computer.
- cluckindan 1y agoThey haven’t, though?
- 1y ago
- bossyTeacher 1y agoAfaik we are a decade or two away from quantum supremacy. All the AI monks, forget that if AI is the future, quantum supremacy is the present. And whoever controls the present, decides the future. Rememeber, it is not about quantum general computing, it's about implementing the quantum computation of Shor's algorithm
- cwmma 1y agobut much like AI hype quantum hype is also way over played, yeah modern asymmetric encryption will be less secure, but even after you have quantum computers that can do Shor's algorithm it might be a while before there are quantum computers affordable enough for it to be an actual threat (i.e. it's not cheaper to just buy a zero day for the target's phone or something). But since we already have post quantum algorithms, the end state of cheap quantum computers is just a new equilibrium where people use the new algorithms and they can't be directly cracked and it's basically the same except maybe you can decrypt historical stuff but who knows if it's worth it.
- bossyTeacher 1y agoI was mostly talking about state actors buying quantum computers that are just built to run that particular algorithm and using it to snoop on poorer countries who cannot afford such tech. Plus all countries will have plenty of systems that have not been quantum proofed. The moment when it becomes affordable to a state actor until most state actors have access to such tech is likely to be a long time especially since no one will admit to possess such tech. And unlike nuclear weapons, it is much harder to prove whether or not someone has one
- Lapsa 1y agobut can it run Doom?
- wiz21c 1y agoLinux would be a start :-)
- junon 1y agoI wouldn't hold my breath for Linux on a quantum computer.
- westurner 1y agoFWIU a 6-stage RISC processor is sufficient to run Linux. Things like CUDA-Q may be faster on classical computers than on quantum computers for forever; though what CUDA-Q solves for is also an optimization problem?
- westurner 1y ago> though what CUDA-Q solves for is also an optimization problem? "Optimization by decoded quantum interferometry" (2025) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09527-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09527-5 .. https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45688122 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45688122
- tbabej 1y agoThe chip would need to be scaled couple of orders of magnitude, but in principle, it is possible :) see https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.12162 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.12162
- DrNosferatu 1y agoI would like to hear from the classical computation people if they validate these results and claims: As many times in the past quantum supremacy was claimed, and then, other groups have shown they can do better with optimized classical methods.
- csnweb 1y agoThat might take a few days or weeks, it seems like they put in some decent effort into it this time. From skimming the supplement I wouldn’t be suprised if the speedup is only 100x though. That’s still significant, but clearly less than they claim. For example I am not entirely convinced that 20% flops efficiency is really the upper limit or that the slicing overhead of 5x is really needed here.
- fHr 1y agoLol
- unit149 1y ago[dead]
- OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago[dead]
- sambapa 1y agoI think that quantum will be the next bubble
- krupan 1y agoThis type of announcement is definitely pumping air into it
- tombert 1y agoI bought a hundred shares of D-Wave about six months ago, betting on this fact. A part of me thinks quantum computing is mostly bullshit, but I would be very happy to be wrong. I should probably learn Q# or something just to be sure.
- NaomiLehman 1y ago100%. I'm buying all the domain names and have already profited heavily over 9 months.
- m3kw9 1y agoAll thats need to verify is, is it faster than classical chips? Why do they need some other methods?
- andy_ppp 1y agoI would be quite worried about advances in quantum computers if I had any Bitcoin after watching this DEFCON talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkVYJx1iLNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkVYJx1iLNs
- IAmGraydon 1y agoEvery time I mention quantum computing as a threat to crypto (which I have been for years), I get downvoted to oblivion. I guess we have a lot of HODLers here. A bet on crypto is a bet against quantum computing.
- mikestorrent 1y agoI haven't seen anyone post any progress on factoring large numbers with quantum computers in a while. Annealers won't do it efficiently, but probably still hold the record anyway, for a relatively small number you could do classical hardware. Gate model machines with enough qubits to do it are still ages off. Bitcoin should find a way to transition to a post-quantum algorithm, but that's about it. As long as they do it before anyone has a big enough QPU, they're fine, and nobody is even close, it seems.
- tsimionescu 1y agoI haven't once even thought of investing in crypto, and think that the technology is mostly useless and proof of work schemes should be banned on environmental grounds. Even so, I don't agree that quantum is a threat to crypto. There are already well known quantum-resistant encryption schemes being deployed live in browsers, today. Crypto can just start adopting one of these schemes today, and we're still probably decades away from a QC that can factor the kinds of primes that crypto security uses. The transition will be slightly more complex for proof of work schemes, since those typically have dedicated hardware - but other types of crypto coins can switch in months, most likely, if they decide to, at least by offering new wallet types or something.
- IAmGraydon 1y ago>There are already well known quantum-resistant encryption schemes being deployed live in browsers, today. Crypto can just start adopting one of these schemes today, and we're still probably decades away from a QC that can factor the kinds of primes that crypto security uses. It's very strange that some people act like switching over to a post quantum cryptography scheme is trivial. Did you watch the video I replied to, which is a talk by an actual quantum computing researcher?
- mjunyeopkim 1y agothe quantum chip iirc only runs a subset of algorithms due to limited gates implementable on the quantum chip; is the quantum chip a universal computer?
- in_a_hole 1y agoThis is more the case for D-Wave's machines which are specialised for quantum annealing, allowing for greater numbers of qubits. Google and most other major hardware players make chips which can implement a universal quantum gate set allowing for arbitrary quantum operations to be performed (in principle). The issue with these chips is that quantum error correction is not fully implemented yet so computations are effectively time-limited due to the build up of noise from imperfect implementation and finite-temperature effects. A big part of current punts at quantum advantage is figuring out how to squeeze every last drop out of these currently faulty devices.
- twothreeone 1y agoNow factor 21.
- laserbeam 1y agoIt’s really hard to parse both the announcement (too much hyperbola) and the article (too technical), however as I understand it, this is what quantum computing should be good at. Not at making classical algorithms faster, but at simulating quantum physics experiments. This is a good direction and I find it more plausible than “we factored numbers faster”. This SHOULD be the main application of the tech. It’s hard to tell if it is because authors can’t do science communication, they can apparently only do sales.
- kwizikle 1y ago> The signal's overlap reveals how a disturbance spreads across the Willow chip On its face this suggests that the result is not deterministic except perhaps on the same Willow chip at the same temperature.
- gsf_emergency_4 1y agoWhy use the subtext? In the peer review (pp30-31), the authors >acknowledge [that] Hamiltonian learning of an actual physical system has not been performed [and] have therefore further de-emphasized the quantum advantage claim in the revised manuscript https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-025-09526-6/MediaObjects/41586_2025_9526_MOESM2_ESM.pdf https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...
- qnleigh 1y agoThis excerpt misses the wider point of the paper. The paragraph immediately following the one you quote still does make claims of quantum advantage: "Our second order OTOC circuits introduce a minimal structure while remaining sufficiently generic that circumvents this challenge by exploiting the exponential advantage provided by including time inversion in the measurement protocol, see arXiv:2407.07754." The advantage claimed by the paper isn't about Hamiltonian learning (i.e extracting model parameters from observational data), but instead about computing the expectation value of a particular observable. They acknowledge that the advantage isn't provable (even the advantage of Shor's algorithm isn't provable), but they argue that there likely is an advantage.
- johncolanduoni 1y agoShor’s algorithm’s advantage isn’t proven, but a proof that integer factorization doesn’t admit a classical algorithm faster than O((log N)^3) could be found. The same applies for Google’s artificial problem.
- gsf_emergency_4 1y agoAn analogy which is closer to Google's experiment: measuring versus calculating the energy gaps in benzene to an arbitrary accuracy. It is "verifiably" faster to measure those with state of the art "quantum tools" but that does not improve our understanding of other aromatic molecules. (we may still get some insights about anthracene however) The googles' advantage can be satisfactorily summarised as "not having to write the problem (ie off-diagonal terms) in terms of a classical basis" -- there is a severe overhead of having to represent qubits as bits. Still, I suspect that that 13000x came from not putting in effort to implement the aforementioned "minimal structure" in their classical counterparts. They emphasized "echoes" and "ergodicity" & I think the "quantum" can further be dropped :) In general, I do believe that whatever "informational advantage" we can get from these experiments should likewise be used to improve classical calculations. As another eg: In the arxiv paper linked by GP they talk about provably-efficient shallow classical shadows
- XiphiasX 1y agoAnd Bitcoin is still 108k… why exactly?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pfortuny 1y ago"demonstrates": that words is a tell-all.
- XiphiasX 1y agoGenuine question - why is Bitcoin not collapsing upon this news? Surely big money that control Bitcoin have high enough IQ to extrapolate inti the future and come to decision on the inevitable implications.
- janpmz 1y agoThe critics claim the noise collapses quantum states so quickly that it's not possible to make full use of the quantum effects. The burden of proof is on the chip makers. I think they have not convinced the critics yet.
- khaki54 1y agoBecause to steal bitcoin by reverse engineering a private key from a public one you need to be able to factor a very large number. Currently the highest number they have factored using only quantum computing is 21.
- ghtbircshotbe 1y agoThey've said this so many times that I'm not even sure what they could say at this point to make me believe them.
- zero_k 1y agoWait, is this another algorithm where they didn't bother even cursorily looking at the classical algorithm for even a minute, then compare it with their stuff? Last time they pulled this, it was my field, and I could only laugh. Just stop this nonsense and start doing some real work. Yeah, I know their "work" seems to be "how to extract money using buzzwords" but it's getting tiring, and I don't consider that "work".
- cashsterling 1y agoUntil a company can demonstrate a quantum volume of even just 2^16... their computer is just about worthless for any sort of half-real quantum computing. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a quantum computing company until they demonstrate decent quantum volume. Most companies computers can't even hit 2^16 so they are figuring out means of distracting the market from the poor fidelity of their systems.
- godzillabrennus 1y agoUntil a company can demonstrate that a motor vehicle can be operated by a layperson, it's just about worthless for any sort of half-real transportation task. I pay zero attention to any technical information and marketing speak coming from a motor vehicle company until they demonstrate decent improvements in operating their machines. Most companies' motor vehicles have to be hand cranked and kick-started by a youthful person with good vitality who doesn't fear being run over by their motor vehicle. -- Some guy in 1925 who worked in the horse and buggy industry...
- cashsterling 1y agoThe better analogy here, in my opinion, is until someone builds a car that actually drives forward... A lot of these quantum computing papers are just loud engine rev'ing. But you are right... "zero attention" is hyperbole... I shouldn't have said "I pay zero attention"... I should have said, "I am underwhelmed and don't give a lot of credence to systems until they demonstrate ability to perform high fidelity calculations of reasonable complexity and depth." I do think superconducting qubits approaches will continue to improve in fidelity and ability... there are just too many brilliant people working on these challenges to count them out.
- mrguyorama 1y agoThe Model T was produced in 1908. Normal people being able to use (though not afford) cars was normal before that. It took only 30 years to go from Otto and Benz going "Look at this neat contraption" to "Mass produced, semi-affordable personal cars".
- northlondoner 1y agoVerification is about ergodicity that reflects very promising approach to error-correction. The concept of ergodicity is quite elegant and used in different physics domains. See recent paper regarding this, might be helpful to community to understand ergodicity. Ergodicity detection algorithms: Scaling of ergodicity in random symbolic dynamics https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08319 https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08319