3 ms·

These machines do not provide any computational speedup, we have plenty of papers coming from academic physicists clearly showing this. Why these people insist

These machines do not provide any computational speedup, we have plenty of papers coming from academic physicists clearly showing this. Why these people insist with their narrative is beyond my comprehension at this stage (maybe, artificially increase the value of their market shares?).. P.S. I was involved in semiconductor physics and quantum computing way before it became a buzz word.

hn_submit 20d ago
I too am convinced that RSA-4096 will remain secure for the foreseeable future. Why everyone's mental about quantum-safe encryption is beyond me.
- lijok 20d ago
  Because peeps are doing HNDL (harvest now, decrypt later) today. They are intercepting your traffic and storing it until they can break crypto. They're doing that today. And they've been doing it for a while. There are contexts in which that's an unacceptable level of risk.
  - hn_submit 20d ago
    I'm personally more worried about flaws in the quantum-safe crypto schemes than in RSA, which is based on the age-old factorization problem of prime numbers. They can harvest all they want, but if no one ever invents a usable, practical and scalable quantum processor all this will be moot.
    - xhkkffbf 20d ago
      It would be ironic if the holes in the quantum-safe crypto meant that they were weaker than the old school options.
      - johntb86 20d ago
        Generally people encrypt with both post-quantum crypto and regular crypto in series to prevent that from being a problem.
  - astrobe_ 20d ago
    HNDL can be worth it without the "threat" of quantum computing; for instance we see currently a lot of interest in AI-assisted math, and maybe it could lead to a breakthrough that affect crypto algorithms that are currently considered safe. Therefore it seems weird to use QC as a benchmark. Rather, if your communications being decrypted in the future is unacceptable, then the logical conclusion is that you must not transmit it in such a way that a third party can intercept it. Admittedly, it is inconvenient or even impractical, so people do accept the risk anyway without admitting it. They are sweeping the issue under the carpet of supposedly QC-proof crypto - because new quantum algorithms can be discovered too.
  - deleted 20d ago
    [deleted]
  - nullsanity 19d ago
    [dead]
- brookst 20d ago
  Classic odds/stakes. What do the odds have to be of a surprise quantum breakthrough before the stakes are serious? 1 in… a million? A billion?
  - bob1029 20d ago
    What are the odds that a new QS crypto scheme has a fatal flaw or is otherwise intentionally backdoored? Amping everyone up with fears over quantum breaking classical seems like a fantastic way to get another round of vulnerabilities injected into everyone's infrastructure.
    - brookst 20d ago
      [dead]
- m4rtink 19d ago
  You can sell them new software because of this. ;-)
hnbdq 20d ago
Yes but if you’re involved in physics you know that physics papers are rich in discourse with correct and incorrect ideas alike. With Phoenix IBM has a system with over 100 qubits close to 99.9 2Q Fidelity and though that does not sound like much it’s already enough to run operations that can’t be computed classically. The system is so well built that most of these qubits can perform well without crosstalk errors hindering execution, and with phoenix they solved mid circuit reset which didn’t work well before, blocking experiments for meaningful runtime error correction. There’s an open scoreboard ibm runs open to all to submit problems demonstrating algorithmic breakthroughs https://quantum-advantage-tracker.github.io/ https://quantum-advantage-tracker.github.io/
- jeanmichelselli 20d ago
  I also have to add that, so far, we know only a handful of algorithms which might run on a general quantum computer (if we had one!). Among those, only two performs something which would actually be useful (Grover and Shor). And we have only those, not for a lack of trying.. it's because coming up with quantum algorithms is intrinsically complicated (it's definitely not like writing an algorithm for a classical machine). So those quantum bits could be, in theory, the most stable thing in the universe, I'd still see them as irrelevant in everyday applications.
  - client4 20d ago
    If two AIs talk to each other does the rest of the forest hear?
  - Escapado 20d ago
    I agree with the “in everyday applications” qualifier. But there are plenty of applications that are research focused where having access to a proper quantum computer would be useful. As a Quantum Circuit fundamentally models a Unitary transformation on some quantum state it is hugely useful to model the time evolution of quantum systems which are experimentally difficult to access using a quantum computer.
    - 20d ago

hn_submit 20d ago

I too am convinced that RSA-4096 will remain secure for the foreseeable future. Why everyone's mental about quantum-safe encryption is beyond me.

lijok 20d ago
Because peeps are doing HNDL (harvest now, decrypt later) today. They are intercepting your traffic and storing it until they can break crypto. They're doing that today. And they've been doing it for a while. There are contexts in which that's an unacceptable level of risk.
- hn_submit 20d ago
  I'm personally more worried about flaws in the quantum-safe crypto schemes than in RSA, which is based on the age-old factorization problem of prime numbers. They can harvest all they want, but if no one ever invents a usable, practical and scalable quantum processor all this will be moot.
  - xhkkffbf 20d ago
    It would be ironic if the holes in the quantum-safe crypto meant that they were weaker than the old school options.
    - johntb86 20d ago
      Generally people encrypt with both post-quantum crypto and regular crypto in series to prevent that from being a problem.
- astrobe_ 20d ago
  HNDL can be worth it without the "threat" of quantum computing; for instance we see currently a lot of interest in AI-assisted math, and maybe it could lead to a breakthrough that affect crypto algorithms that are currently considered safe. Therefore it seems weird to use QC as a benchmark. Rather, if your communications being decrypted in the future is unacceptable, then the logical conclusion is that you must not transmit it in such a way that a third party can intercept it. Admittedly, it is inconvenient or even impractical, so people do accept the risk anyway without admitting it. They are sweeping the issue under the carpet of supposedly QC-proof crypto - because new quantum algorithms can be discovered too.
- deleted 20d ago
  [deleted]
- nullsanity 19d ago
  [dead]
brookst 20d ago
Classic odds/stakes. What do the odds have to be of a surprise quantum breakthrough before the stakes are serious? 1 in… a million? A billion?
- bob1029 20d ago
  What are the odds that a new QS crypto scheme has a fatal flaw or is otherwise intentionally backdoored? Amping everyone up with fears over quantum breaking classical seems like a fantastic way to get another round of vulnerabilities injected into everyone's infrastructure.
  - brookst 20d ago
    [dead]
m4rtink 19d ago
You can sell them new software because of this. ;-)

hnbdq 20d ago

Yes but if you’re involved in physics you know that physics papers are rich in discourse with correct and incorrect ideas alike. With Phoenix IBM has a system with over 100 qubits close to 99.9 2Q Fidelity and though that does not sound like much it’s already enough to run operations that can’t be computed classically. The system is so well built that most of these qubits can perform well without crosstalk errors hindering execution, and with phoenix they solved mid circuit reset which didn’t work well before, blocking experiments for meaningful runtime error correction. There’s an open scoreboard ibm runs open to all to submit problems demonstrating algorithmic breakthroughs https://quantum-advantage-tracker.github.io/ https://quantum-advantage-tracker.github.io/

jeanmichelselli 20d ago
I also have to add that, so far, we know only a handful of algorithms which might run on a general quantum computer (if we had one!). Among those, only two performs something which would actually be useful (Grover and Shor). And we have only those, not for a lack of trying.. it's because coming up with quantum algorithms is intrinsically complicated (it's definitely not like writing an algorithm for a classical machine). So those quantum bits could be, in theory, the most stable thing in the universe, I'd still see them as irrelevant in everyday applications.
- client4 20d ago
  If two AIs talk to each other does the rest of the forest hear?
- Escapado 20d ago
  I agree with the “in everyday applications” qualifier. But there are plenty of applications that are research focused where having access to a proper quantum computer would be useful. As a Quantum Circuit fundamentally models a Unitary transformation on some quantum state it is hugely useful to model the time evolution of quantum systems which are experimentally difficult to access using a quantum computer.
  - 20d ago