Comment by sgt101
3 years ago
>"In quantum computing thinking is shifting from a government-funded big science approach to an exploration and exploitation of the more dynamic start-up innovation ecosystem. “We need to try out different things, and use the innovation ecosystem to test, learn and build machines."
this is weird because it's very clear that the basic science of quantum computing is far from done. Investors can pour as much money as they like into a series of holes in the ground, but if the universe says no then nothing will come of it. We do not know how to solve many of the fundamental problems of scaling a QC, until we do I think this is really just stupid.
The QC startup scene looks like 50 Theranos's in search of a lawsuit to me; it's going to be 30 years before serious and usable machines appear - if ever.
Its called the Explore-Exploit Tradeoff. If you are King of Spain you can afford to send out a bunch of ships that will never return. If you are not King of Spain, and want to be King of Spain, then all this wild goose chase stuff makes no sense. Makes more sense to get busy on land exploiting others to become King of Spain.
Problem is when the King of Spain wants to become King of Europe and starts waging war to achieve his higher ambitions. That is what you see with modern companies, Google isn't fine just being the king of Search, Amazon isn't fine just being the king of online shopping etc, everyone wants to dominate ever more areas.
You see it with tin pot dictators too.
the difference between a QC and Theranos is you can't prove a quantum computer isn't actually working as advertised.
I was quite irritated by the debunking of Sycamore's result recently; I had the impression from the pr (and the paper) that they had obtained exact results, but the truth is that these results were approximate. That's totally different. Previously I had dug out of the papers that it takes 48hrs to boot the machine and that it can only run for a few hours... and that was disappointing enough.
Also the obscuring of the impact of quantum fidelity on the Eagle chip from IBM. Ok, it's got 124 qbits - but you end up with a max circuit size of 24 which is similar to the previous 48 qbit generation (I think that one is called dodo or something).
Anyway, it looks like the absolute best spin is put on everything and the actual problems are being ducked - probably because they have to be because they are way beyond the current SOA.
if I got a startup grant for every idea someone can't prove doesn't work I'd be the most well funded individual on the planet
Shor you can: can it break RSA? If yes, QC. If not, not QC.
What if it's just able to break a particular RSA file after several billion attempts to keep it running long enough?
It is likely an Edison scenario, we just need to test thousands of things to find something that is stable enough to produce results. There are so many possibly setups to make it work that we will probably find something sooner or later. We already have many setups that works, but aren't powerful enough to be useful, just need to find a setup that works a bit better.
Theranos made the mistake of trying to apply the "fake it until you make it" strategy to medical devices, where there just isn't the option avoid proving your solution is safe and effective before bringing it to market.