It feels like 6 months ago, I couldn’t go a few hours without being exposed to some new wild claims from Microsoft or Google, or any of the other companies working on this. Lately nothing comes up in any of my feeds.
It feels like 6 months ago, I couldn’t go a few hours without being exposed to some new wild claims from Microsoft or Google, or any of the other companies working on this. Lately nothing comes up in any of my feeds.
The things about quantum computers is they are really, really powerful at a some kinds of things, some of the time. Maybe even most of the time.
Binary computers are okay at one thing, but it does that one thing exactly every time. If it ever makes a mistake then entire thing might crash.
The problem is a quantum computer is so different from normal computers you have to start over from the beginning of the tech stack. Even if you get it working reliability (which is hard to do), how does it help you? You can do some crazy math, but it can’t run an operating system. It doesn’t have a bios. There are no drivers that speak some percentage of up spin vs down spin. There isn’t a standard assembly language. There isn’t a standard anything. It’s like how computers were in the 40s.
I think quantum computers are very interesting and might help in very specific applications, and I mean like custom made math heavy applications that only run on that one machine you built it for kind of specific.
Can that change the world? Maybe. But it will take time. No one wants to talk about it because it’s a hard problem that is still years away from doing much to impact peoples lives. Better to talk about ai slop, that gets clicks because you can see it and touch it right now.
Quantum computers will always exist as a coprocessor, like a GPU or an NPU. You cannot run an operating system on your GPU either. Your GPU is worse for a lot of general purpose tasks your CPU can do, but it excels at very specific kinds of tasks, and so your CPU delegates those specific tasks to the GPU. That is how quantum computers work in practice, they are never stand-alone computers. They are always attached to a classical computer that delegates tasks to it. They won’t ever replace regular computers. Even if in the distant future they manage to build quantum optical chips that run at room temperature at can be made consumer-affordable, they will just be sold as QPUs which you would install into your regular personal computer if you need one.
Mathematician: can confirm. Some of my colleagues are extremely excited at the prospect of working on a quantum machine, some small groups of programmers and mathematicians are working on some really fringe and really cool ideas. Even the theory of working on a quantum computer has produced unexpected results for binary computers. By outside of these small clicks, there are no other applications.
Aren’t they theoretically very good at breaking encryption? That seems like a pretty big deal imo
That’s exactly the section of math loosing their mind on the topic 😂
There is still quite a divide between the needed computational power and the available one, though.
There is a proposed Shor’s Algorithm. To use a sloppy analogy, this arrangement would be the equivalent to fully planning out a trip to the center of the Earth, just waiting for the digging machine to be done and we’re groovy.
Worth a read; Emphasis mine:
As a dude that has walked away from tech madness… I reflect now, and as much as I did some insanely challenging and rewarding stuff in my career, and as much as I was addicted to solving those problems, I seriously do not envy anybody having to do novel research in this area. The amount of work to realize a dead end would be existentially draining to me. But there’s also something about being on the bleeding edge…
I am a mathematician, and yes to everything. I had a couple of research lines that, after months or years turned out to be useless/inapplicable/… and it is a rough blow to handle when that happens. Usually compensated by the other research lines or the thought of all you learned along the way. Overall, I am still in love with research, but it’s not for everyone.
Thank you for sharing your personal story! I relate so much!
I was a major contributor to the underlying technology and game systems that drove the world’s first internet-enabled touch screen game network. We had crazy score comparison patents, all kinds of shit going man - we were hitting on all cylinders. Partnership with American Games, AMOA, Monolith, major PC distributors like Compaq, tie into in-house developed probability contest back-end … we were exhibiting at the computer game developers conferences.
After three and a half years, it alllllllllll ended up in a puff of smoke. Although I developed some amazing technologies, not one of those things ended up seeing the light of day. Fuck. Me.
I worked on so many firsts in the gaming sector and the truth is, 90% of them at minimum were a complete waste of resources in terms of bringing a product to bear.
But through it all, it was the passion to find problems that needed solving, and then solving them that really drove me so at least I had that!
So it won’t help me get more fps in counter strike?
It sounds like it’s at the spot that digital computers were at prior to WWII.
Hopefully it doesn’t take WWIII to make them useful.
Well, they are useful for breaking encryption…
Heeere we goooo…