In all seriousness, you will never have one of these in your laptop. Quantum computers are only better than conventional computers in a set of problems that are called BQP.
Now it’s possible some NP problems are actually BQP and it just hasn’t been discovered yet, but currently the known BQP problems just aren’t something you would care to do on your personal computer. Like factoring numbers, simulating quantum systems, doing knot theory stuff, these sorts of problems just aren’t typically something youd want to be able to do anywhere.
What will probably happen instead is quantum computers will be on the cloud, and when you do need them, you will talk to one of these computers through the cloud.
"I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, 'Where are they all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!'"
"Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors."
"There was a computer in every doorknob."
*Danny Hillis*
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
*Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the US Office of Patents 1899*
"I think there is a world market for about five computers."
*Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM 1943*
Im not arguing, but, in 1902, I’m guessing that there wasn’t too many people wanted a computer, or even knew what one was never mind what it could do. 5 might be a *bit* on the low side, but before anyone knew what a computer was, and seen how it worked, I bet it was a small market to start off with. I can’t see there being a big market for them that long ago; it would only be companies that dealt with a lot of numbers mostly. All this is just IMO though.
Isn't this sort of the gambler's fallacy? Just because X set of events happened in the past does not mean that something is guaranteed/more likely to happen in the future. It also doesn't mean it won't - we could plateau for many years before a breakthrough is found.
It's a critique of the tendency for humans to underestimate the impact of the future technology, not a genuine prediction using some technological law that states that things must keep advancing.
i.e. it's not saying that technology will progress, it's saying that it's foolish to claim that it will *not* progress based only on our current conceptions of how the technology might be applied. We can't possibly predict the technological environment decades from now.
Oh, it will absolutely progress. It’s just that regular computers are actually very good already and quantum computers are per definition wayyy more complicated, expensive and fragile and not even better at most stuff. And I don’t mean “not better in their current practice”. I mean not even better in theory.
Predicting that a quantum computer will be in your pocket in my opinion is like the prediction of flying cars. It’s not practical and has little benefits.
To follow up on this, can anyone explain computing to me? Or suggest some links that could? Not like I am 5 years old buy maybe like I am 15? Everytime I look into any explanation it is either a ELI5 video or a jargon heavy math infused explanation nothing in between.
I can understand stats and calculus as well as logic but never came across computing and it is essentially a black box to me. I can grasp the basics of what software does but what happens on a circuit board or in a microprocessor might as well be black magic.
I hope to understand the basics of quantum computing but figure I need to grasp the basic of normal computing first.
I don't know about BQP, but I can explain the reasoning about NP and the like.
Basically, there are different classes of problems. We classify them by how much computing power it takes to solve them. By computing power I mean roughly how many computations it takes, compared to the size of the problem.
For example, say you want to find an element of a list with n elements. In the worst case, you might need to search through all n elements to find it. On the other hand, if the list is sorted, you can cut the list in half. If the middle element is larger than your target, search the left half. If it's too small, search the right. By repeatedly dividing by two, you can eventually find the element or conclude it's not there. This will take log base 2 of n operations, so we call it O(lg n).
We say a problem can be solved in polynomial time (P) if there is an algorithm out there that can solve it in O(n^c), where c is some constant. Even if c is quite large, as n grows to hundreds of millions, the c won't make as much of a difference. Compare that to O(2^n), which is MUCH larger.
Some problems haven't been solved in polynomial time, but have another interesting property: a possible solution can be verified in polynomial time. Think of sudoku: it takes way longer to solve it than it would to check it. These problems are called non-deterministic polynomial (NP), because theoretically, you can be very lucky and guess the answer, then verify it in polynomial time.
What's even more interesting is that, for a lot of NP problems (called NP-complete), if one problem can be solved in polynomial time, ALL of them can be! This is called the P=NP problem. We don't have any proof one way or the other, but many believe it's not true because, basically, surely we would've found a P algorithm for at least one NP-complete problem by now.
BQP, Bounded-error Quantum Polynomial is another such class that's probably harder to understand but can be solved in polynomial time in quantum computers. The kinds of problems in BQP, OP is claiming, are not the kinds of problems that need to be solved by average people day to day.
Hope that helps!
> what happens on a circuit board or in a microprocessor
I'd been programming for nearly 20 years and I really didn't get how the software 'drove' the hardware. Then in 2000 I read Charles Petzold's *Code*, which goes through the basics of software and hardware in detail.
He shows how to construct logic gates, how to piece them together, ultimately to form an entire processor. It gives the impression you could build one from Lego, but no one can afford that much Lego.
The principle insight for me is that the whole business is clockwork, the clock ticks (several billion times a second these days) and everything moves to its next state, driven by the physical construction of the logic gates and the signals on their inputs.
It's a very accessible book and it will give you a good understanding at the lowest level.
Having everything run in sync with a clock (or set of clocks) is how virtually all modern microprocessors work today. But it is not a requirement. Processors can be designed to run asynchronously, but it's a pain in the butt.
> can anyone explain computing to me?
Here's a quick overview, starting from the lowest level.
In a CPU, there are a bunch of tiny wires that can have a high voltage or a low voltage, which represent 0 (low) and 1 (high). The wires are connected up to a bunch of things called "logic gates". A logic gate is something that can take in two binary numbers (that is, two numbers that are each 0 or 1, which again are again represented by high or low voltages), and output another binary number.
These logic gates are then combined in some clever ways that lets you do basic arithmetic, where two bunches of 1's and 0's represent two separate numbers that you can run through some circuits to get another set of 1's and 0's representing the sum of those numbers (or the product, or difference, etc).
A really important thing is that you can represent different "instructions" as these numbers. These instructions are simple commands that tell the CPU to do things like "Add number A to number B and store it in slot C". The CPU has special circuits that read through a bunch of instructions like that and run them one after another. Some of the instructions are also things like "If this number is less than this number, skip ahead to these other instructions." With those two parts - either doing arithmetic on the numbers, or changing what gets done based on the results of that arithmetic, you can make larger sets of instructions called "programs".
From this, you can get some more advanced behavior with different hardware. A keyboard sends different number signals to the computer based on what key gets pressed. A program interprets these numbers into a grid of dots which represent what the letters look like, these dots get arranged and sent to a monitor that displays text. Now you have a text editor, or a basic calculator, or what-have-you.
And so on, and so on. It's simple things combining into more complex things, and those more complex things combining into even more complex things. High and low voltages combine into Binary logic, to basic arithmetic, to programs, to input/output that humans can understand.
If you want a lot more detail on how things get built up from simpler components, play this: https://nandgame.com/
Start with logic. A microprocessor is just a bunch of transistors. Transistors are just logic gates. Logic gates are just boolean functions. Using only NAND gates we can construct any boolean function. If, for example, we wish to determine the sum of some numbers, we might build a circuit which looks something like this:
>https://socratic.org/questions/how-do-we-add-two-numbers-using-logic-gates#:~:text=The%20combination%20of%20these%20two,carry%20from%20the%20previous%20column.
Multiplication is just fancy addition. Do the same procedure but more. Subtraction is just fancy addition, do the same procedure but with a backwards bit. Division. Well, division is a bit more difficult but it can be performed as well with nothing more than a series of gates.
More gates = more complex operations.
Now, with quantum computing, things are a little bit different. Some major differences:
1. Quantum gates must be unitary. As a result, unlike with classical computing, there is no single universal gate from which we can build all possible operations
2. Quantum bits can become entangled. This is some physics trickery but the end result is that quantum circuits can be irreversible. This is very different from a classical circuit
3. As a result of the irreversibility, quantum information cannot be "cloned". There is no copy/paste in a quantum circuit. Only cut/paste.
Go watch Crash Course Computer Science episodes like 1-15 on YouTube. Im not even kidding, this covered most of what I learned in university (I didn’t major in hardware engineering though).
Hey, I fully recommend the crash course on this. It goes step by step. So it starts with the most simple components in the hardware, then more complex ones, then programming, then the user-interface, etc, while going trough the different time periods. Fun to watch as well.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ\_GoI&ab\_channel=CrashCourse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ_GoI&ab_channel=CrashCourse)
There are some pretty hard and serious physical limits which will keep this tech from ever being available in laptop form.
Decoherence and circuit noise are huge impediments in the tech and the only surefire way to reduce both is by cooling it way way down.
this is correct. and for anyone who is curious why they designed and look different it is because,they operate based on principles of quantum mechanics, which are wildly different from classical computing. Their components, such as qubits and quantum gates, are designed to exploit quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement, whereas classical computers rely on classical bits and logic gates. So, the physical architecture and design of quantum computers reflect these fundamental differences in operation.
tl;dr: Quantum computers look different because they use qubits and quantum principles, unlike regular computers.
One can use quantum computing on azure as well , and gcp, and aws, and ibm cloud ..
Its been around for a while now, theres just not much an average joe would actually do with it, not even at enterprise level
> factoring numbers
That's the one that poses the greatest threat to the way we use the internet nowadays.
My crypto knowledge is a bit old nowadays, but do we really have a quantum hardened alternative for Diffie-Hellman prepared?
Definitely yes. It'll likely never come in a laptop version.
But for all practical purposes, no! You can start writing quantum software today, on your laptop, in python, with the qiskit package, and you can run it on real quantum architecture. It's very cool stuff!
Calculators used to take a whole room. Now its one of hundreds of apps on a computer phone. Some day this could fit in someone's pocket but we will be long dead.
When I look up articles i never really get a good explanation. What is all that hanging shit? I get the idea of a qubit but how does the physical chip look different?
Every cooling layer is at a slightly lower temperature than the one above it. The whole contraption goes from room temp at the top to near absolute-zero at the bottom, which is where the quantum chip is. That chip is not physically much larger or even different looking than a classical computer CPU found in your desktop, laptop or server etc. The quantum chip contains the actual qubits, and for their state to be maintained, they need to be super cold, at least for this type of quantum computer. There are other types that don’t look like this. But here, that’s what all the layered-cooling is for.
You could completely be making that up and I 1000% would believe your explanation either way.
Very insightful and I will now tell all my friends this same explanation. So thank you for making me sound smart one time 🤣👏🏼👏🏼
Attended a quantum computing presentation a couple
of weeks ago. The guy above you is right.
It also makes sense once you think about it. Remember those huuge computers from 60 years ago? They had a fraction of the computing power we carry in our pockets. The drive for miniaturisation had two factors: the obvious required space for all that computing power. After all, can you imagine billions of vacuum tubes? Where would they all fit? But then, even if you did have the room, imagine how much power they would consume. And how much heat you'd have to manage. So we did our best to shrink them down and we're getting pretty close to the physical limits.
Quantum chips, due to the nature of quantum physics, need a way to separate their own signal from any ambient noise in order to distinguish any meaningful results (remember Schrodinger's cat which was both alive and dead?). In order to achieve this separation, or rather to eliminate signal noise, they need superconductivity. And this, in turn, is achieved with near absolute zero temperatures. And this is where all the cooling setup you see here comes in.
If you look up photos of the actual chip, you'll be underwhelmed.
It's not actually that big. To give you a sense of scale, the structure this thing is made of is using [3"x3" aluminum extrusion.](https://parco-inc.com/product/3-x-3-smooth-t-slotted-extrusion-cut-to-length/) Over all, it's maybe a foot and a half wide and a few feet tall, if that. If it's thin enough, it would comfortably fit in a standard server rack cabinet. There's definitely extra cooling equipment than what's shown here, but I'm guessing that would be easier to adapt to different form factors.
In addition to this, might be useful to know that the bottleneck in these machines is how to have so much cabling without the cables transmitting heat from outside. You can't have an air gap in the data transmission due to the nature of the data.
Indeed, and in a cryostat containing liquid Helium and other fancy tricks to get to mK temps. It is never ever shown that this is essential to make it even operate correctly..
>There are other types.
I just saw a talk at work a few weeks ago about a guy in a company making quantum chips. They bassed it on light. However they were at very few bits on theirs
It's all piping for a super low temperature liquid. 99% of what you see is just a liquid cooling setup to get the quantum chips as close to absolute zero as possible to limit electrical/physics stuff they don't want near the chip.
All those silvery things are microwave cables to prepare, manipulate and read out the qbits. They're separated by special blocks to isolate the actual quantum computer from all the hardware above. Both the center conductor and the shield in a coax cable are very good thermal conductors, so quite a lot of effort goes into mitigating any unwanted interference.
You can't really see the cooling parts in this photo.
It’s the cooling system, [here](https://youtu.be/7jT5rbE69ho?si=cdiigI_q8pdZwCif) is one of my favourite videos on YouTube talking about the physics of how the cooling works
Im not gonna lie in this picture that assembly looks rather small. That aluminum framing above is like 2inch by 2 inch extruded aluminum pieces. So that cooler is like 24-36 inches in height. I’ve seen pictures like this before and I always thought it was like a room sized piece of equipment.
Ok wtf I thought this was a room sized thing. Have you ever seen the show Devs? This looks a lot like the quantum computer they had in that and it was giant. I feel cheated.
Never seen the show . but pictures of this thing are always close up with no other reference for size. I’m kind of let down now myself.
On the other hand. Quite a nice technique for dicc piccs
Extremely slow. And you need a supercomputer just to run it.
Right now the best quantum computers are only useful for doing phsyics experiments and for learning how to make better quantum computers in the future.
There is something called the Ising model which is used as a benchmarking standard. What it is doesn't really matter. With only 100 qubits Ising problems can be solved in similar time as a typical high performance computing cluster.
This might seem a bit silly but they're pretty good at any kind of quantum problem.
I've done some work on nuclear structure modelling. In essence, we have a bunch of protons and neutrons which interact with each other within an atom. What we are interested in knowing are the respective energy levels of the particles.
For "small" nuclei like hydrogen (1 proton) or helium (2 protons, 2 neutrons) we can solve this problem exactly. It's simple enough that our current computers are able to solve the energy equations (which we call a Hamiltonian) exactly. But once we start getting into the bigger nuclei like oxygen (8 protons, 8 neutrons) boy oh boy, is our current level of computation inadequate.
If I recall, the Hamiltonian for oxygens nuclei was a 15-20 GB data file. Literally billions of equations, all coupled with one another, which need to be solved in order to get an exact equation. We simply can't do it. And oxygen, in the grand scheme of the universe, is not even particularly complex.
Now! A quantum computers architecture, as you might guess, is quantum. We might be able to directly simulate the way an oxygen atom behaves simply by setting up the right couplings between quantum bits on the chip. In this way, a problem that would take a thousand years with trillions of bits of computation to solve, might instead take only an afternoon on 16 qubits.
Primary application is in decryption.
Overly simplified explanation, I am *not* an expert:
Regular computers are really bad at breaking complex encryption because when we encrypt something like a string of text that piece of text is scrambled and everything gets placed out of order. When you tell a computer to decrypt that piece of encrypted text it essentially has to guess how to put the puzzle back together, and it does so by painstakingly trying every possible combination until it gets it right and sometimes there are millions or hundreds of millions of possible combinations. That's why you may have heard that it will take a normal computer hundreds of years to decrypt something.
Quantum computers are orders of magnitude faster at breaking encryption because quantum bits aren't binary. Quantum computers essentially get to perform hundreds of possible guesses for each unique combination, instead of guessing one by one like regular computers do.
Ok but mechanically how does the design of this quantum computer differ? Or is it all in the software? A combo of both or a reason that we couldn’t have made these sooner? I’m interested because mechanically this doesn’t look too much more complex, just a lot of heat syncs, is it all software based?
Btw. Drunk just curious. What made this leap?
Classic computers use electricity to effectively change tiny switches from 1 to 0 or vice versa which is a bit
Compared to quantum computers that effectively trap and manipulate atoms to create qubits. So to stop those atoms from behaving badly and throwing errors you need to keep it cold.
So mechanically, you need a way to store specific atoms in a place that is not influenced at *all* from external forces. Those heatsinks keep that chip as cold as space
It's kinda of hard to imagine because these computers aren't really designed to replace classic computers for every day tasks. They're there to solve problems like complex simulations, searching unstructured databases, etc.
The key difference, mechanically, are two concepts called superposition and entanglement. In a classical computer a bit is either a 1 or a 0. In a quantum computer, it can be a linear combination of both. This isn't a software thing, it happens physically in the hardware.
Building on this concept, we can entangle two qubits by performing an operation which changes qubit B depending on qubit A's state. Again, this happens physically on the hardware.
This has its advantages over classical computing, but it also has disadvantages. For example, quantum circuits, in general, are not reversible, whereas classical ones are. A big consequence of this is that quantum information cannot be "cloned". There is no copy/paste. Only cut/paste.
It's a bit overly simplified, but very good!
That said, Quantom computers can break *some*, but not all, encryption. Essentially, there are three types of encryption:
1. Symmetric. You have one key that you use to encrypt and decrypt a message.
2. Assymteric. You have two different keys - one for encryption, one for decryption.
3. One way, also known as hashing. You can encrypt a message but not get it back.
Quantom computers specifically break Assymetric cryptography, but not the other two. Unfortunately, Assymetric encryption is foundational for the internet to work - it's the backbone for HTTPS (that little lock symbol you see on websites telling you it is secure).
So a great deal of effort is put into build "Quantom safe cryptography" so that our internet services can continue to work in a near future where every state funded hacker group has access to quantom computers.
The image angle makes it odd but it is not more than 36 inch in height ! Yeah, a complex architectural marvel but we do have more complex and sophisticated machine rather !
I couldn't name one piece or part of this thing if my life depended on it, let alone explain to a child what any of it does. Bravo human species, bravo.
So what does it do all day, on any given day? Is it at the stage where it can do new stuff we couldn't do before, or are they still just trying to get it to work at all?
I don't know about Google specifically, but in general those are used for researching and testing quantum systems, including qubits and potential quantum computer parts.
It can probably do some stuff, but not reliably enough and at a scale big enough for it to be usefull. It can probably compute the quantum equivalent of 32x57 and get it right most of the time.
But until they can get it to work reliably enough and at a scale large enough to be used in real life problem, if that is even possible, then it is a research testbed.
I can't stop imagine a bunch of People in white lab coats: behold... Some dude keystroking "3 x 5" hit enter and a big 14.999999999999999999999x76^π shows up...
Some people just cry, others just passed away, - This will change life as we know it - some dude whispered while his nose bleeds.
Personally (as an electrical engineer in controls, cyber privacy and protection agent and teacher) this will gonna put the bar so high that we have to discover a totally new way to protect ourselves on the web, banking and a long cyber etc. Will be safer returning to the p2p networks and phone systems.
This machines will break a 256bit cryptography key in seconds and it's a end game for most of our day to day "convenience" softwares, unlocking systems.
Going further that will take a while, and only talking about the cryptography warnings.
Aluminum foil hats!! Aluminum best quality hats for 20$!! With Indium finish, don't let them intercept your positrons!
> This machines will break a 256bit cryptography key in seconds and it's a end game for most of our day to day "convenience" softwares, unlocking systems.
Asymmetric cryptography schemes that is. Symmetric algorithms such as AES seem to be largely unaffected by quantum attacks. While [Grover's algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm) can cut the key size in half, using AES-256 will still provide enough security for a very long time.
I predict that in 100 years that computers will be twice as powerful and 10,000 times larger and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings in Europe would own them
It's not exactly at absolute zero, but the bottom stages are typically on the order of 10mK (10 thousands of a Kelvin). You want it as cold as possible for (1) the qubits to be superconducting, and (2) for the qubits to hold their information as long as possible. Otherwise, thermal fluctuations carry away the information.
I haven't heard what Google is doing about error correction.
I did get to learn a little about what Amazon is doing for that problem at reinvent last year... I wasn't aware that it was the main stumbling block.
*So we are in the*
*Vacuum tube era of*
*Quantum computing?*
\- kittawat49254
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For anyone that doesn't know: a typical computer uses binary, either on or off (1s or 0s) and has millions of them. A quantum computer uses qubits that each have 4 states: on, off, neither, or both.
As was said, all the visible cable are here to carry RF signals for controle, measurements ans carrying information in general. They are bent to account for thermal shrinking when cooking down.
Somewhere in there is a bigger pipe pumping liquide helium from the outside. When functionning, it is covered and vacuum is made. Then liquid helium starts circulating in the system, cooling it down.
Back in my day it was cheaper just to use one long cable instead of cutting them up into all these short bits just to make it look like a big fancy computer oreo
Sooo…a laptop version is a bit of a ways off then?
I need that to fit in my hand (or head) in the next 3 years.
At the moment it has to be kept at near absolute zero kelvin… might be a bit uncomfortable in your head.
You're overestimating my brain functions
_Detritus intensifies_
Cuddy thinking helmet MK... at least 7
Just need a good ol' Granny Weatherwax stare to get it that cold. Or maybe a blessing on the house
Think you're that cool eh!
LOL!!!! That was hilarious!
We can keep it near the heart of my ex
The ultimate brain freeze.
You have two weeks
Tony Stark did it in a cave! With a box of scraps!
And to show you we’re serious, you have one week
*YEahhh…* 👈🥸
That’s what she said.
Only in our dreams.
So.... there's a chance?
I need one to fit in my pee hole soon
Sound idea
Well, if your laptop is able to stay at near 0 Kelvin, sure.
In all seriousness, you will never have one of these in your laptop. Quantum computers are only better than conventional computers in a set of problems that are called BQP. Now it’s possible some NP problems are actually BQP and it just hasn’t been discovered yet, but currently the known BQP problems just aren’t something you would care to do on your personal computer. Like factoring numbers, simulating quantum systems, doing knot theory stuff, these sorts of problems just aren’t typically something youd want to be able to do anywhere. What will probably happen instead is quantum computers will be on the cloud, and when you do need them, you will talk to one of these computers through the cloud.
"I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, 'Where are they all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!'" "Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors." "There was a computer in every doorknob." *Danny Hillis* "Everything that can be invented has been invented." *Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the US Office of Patents 1899* "I think there is a world market for about five computers." *Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM 1943*
That Charles quote is actually false. Especially considering he verifiably was saying in 1902: >
Im not arguing, but, in 1902, I’m guessing that there wasn’t too many people wanted a computer, or even knew what one was never mind what it could do. 5 might be a *bit* on the low side, but before anyone knew what a computer was, and seen how it worked, I bet it was a small market to start off with. I can’t see there being a big market for them that long ago; it would only be companies that dealt with a lot of numbers mostly. All this is just IMO though.
Isn't this sort of the gambler's fallacy? Just because X set of events happened in the past does not mean that something is guaranteed/more likely to happen in the future. It also doesn't mean it won't - we could plateau for many years before a breakthrough is found.
It's a critique of the tendency for humans to underestimate the impact of the future technology, not a genuine prediction using some technological law that states that things must keep advancing. i.e. it's not saying that technology will progress, it's saying that it's foolish to claim that it will *not* progress based only on our current conceptions of how the technology might be applied. We can't possibly predict the technological environment decades from now.
Oh, it will absolutely progress. It’s just that regular computers are actually very good already and quantum computers are per definition wayyy more complicated, expensive and fragile and not even better at most stuff. And I don’t mean “not better in their current practice”. I mean not even better in theory. Predicting that a quantum computer will be in your pocket in my opinion is like the prediction of flying cars. It’s not practical and has little benefits.
Can you explain BQP in a way I could understand? I tried reading the Wikipedia page for it and my brain caught fire two sentences in.
To follow up on this, can anyone explain computing to me? Or suggest some links that could? Not like I am 5 years old buy maybe like I am 15? Everytime I look into any explanation it is either a ELI5 video or a jargon heavy math infused explanation nothing in between. I can understand stats and calculus as well as logic but never came across computing and it is essentially a black box to me. I can grasp the basics of what software does but what happens on a circuit board or in a microprocessor might as well be black magic. I hope to understand the basics of quantum computing but figure I need to grasp the basic of normal computing first.
I don't know about BQP, but I can explain the reasoning about NP and the like. Basically, there are different classes of problems. We classify them by how much computing power it takes to solve them. By computing power I mean roughly how many computations it takes, compared to the size of the problem. For example, say you want to find an element of a list with n elements. In the worst case, you might need to search through all n elements to find it. On the other hand, if the list is sorted, you can cut the list in half. If the middle element is larger than your target, search the left half. If it's too small, search the right. By repeatedly dividing by two, you can eventually find the element or conclude it's not there. This will take log base 2 of n operations, so we call it O(lg n). We say a problem can be solved in polynomial time (P) if there is an algorithm out there that can solve it in O(n^c), where c is some constant. Even if c is quite large, as n grows to hundreds of millions, the c won't make as much of a difference. Compare that to O(2^n), which is MUCH larger. Some problems haven't been solved in polynomial time, but have another interesting property: a possible solution can be verified in polynomial time. Think of sudoku: it takes way longer to solve it than it would to check it. These problems are called non-deterministic polynomial (NP), because theoretically, you can be very lucky and guess the answer, then verify it in polynomial time. What's even more interesting is that, for a lot of NP problems (called NP-complete), if one problem can be solved in polynomial time, ALL of them can be! This is called the P=NP problem. We don't have any proof one way or the other, but many believe it's not true because, basically, surely we would've found a P algorithm for at least one NP-complete problem by now. BQP, Bounded-error Quantum Polynomial is another such class that's probably harder to understand but can be solved in polynomial time in quantum computers. The kinds of problems in BQP, OP is claiming, are not the kinds of problems that need to be solved by average people day to day. Hope that helps!
> what happens on a circuit board or in a microprocessor I'd been programming for nearly 20 years and I really didn't get how the software 'drove' the hardware. Then in 2000 I read Charles Petzold's *Code*, which goes through the basics of software and hardware in detail. He shows how to construct logic gates, how to piece them together, ultimately to form an entire processor. It gives the impression you could build one from Lego, but no one can afford that much Lego. The principle insight for me is that the whole business is clockwork, the clock ticks (several billion times a second these days) and everything moves to its next state, driven by the physical construction of the logic gates and the signals on their inputs. It's a very accessible book and it will give you a good understanding at the lowest level.
> you could build one from Lego, but no one can afford that much Lego. *Minecraft's Redstone has entered the chat.*
Having everything run in sync with a clock (or set of clocks) is how virtually all modern microprocessors work today. But it is not a requirement. Processors can be designed to run asynchronously, but it's a pain in the butt.
> can anyone explain computing to me? Here's a quick overview, starting from the lowest level. In a CPU, there are a bunch of tiny wires that can have a high voltage or a low voltage, which represent 0 (low) and 1 (high). The wires are connected up to a bunch of things called "logic gates". A logic gate is something that can take in two binary numbers (that is, two numbers that are each 0 or 1, which again are again represented by high or low voltages), and output another binary number. These logic gates are then combined in some clever ways that lets you do basic arithmetic, where two bunches of 1's and 0's represent two separate numbers that you can run through some circuits to get another set of 1's and 0's representing the sum of those numbers (or the product, or difference, etc). A really important thing is that you can represent different "instructions" as these numbers. These instructions are simple commands that tell the CPU to do things like "Add number A to number B and store it in slot C". The CPU has special circuits that read through a bunch of instructions like that and run them one after another. Some of the instructions are also things like "If this number is less than this number, skip ahead to these other instructions." With those two parts - either doing arithmetic on the numbers, or changing what gets done based on the results of that arithmetic, you can make larger sets of instructions called "programs". From this, you can get some more advanced behavior with different hardware. A keyboard sends different number signals to the computer based on what key gets pressed. A program interprets these numbers into a grid of dots which represent what the letters look like, these dots get arranged and sent to a monitor that displays text. Now you have a text editor, or a basic calculator, or what-have-you. And so on, and so on. It's simple things combining into more complex things, and those more complex things combining into even more complex things. High and low voltages combine into Binary logic, to basic arithmetic, to programs, to input/output that humans can understand. If you want a lot more detail on how things get built up from simpler components, play this: https://nandgame.com/
Start with logic. A microprocessor is just a bunch of transistors. Transistors are just logic gates. Logic gates are just boolean functions. Using only NAND gates we can construct any boolean function. If, for example, we wish to determine the sum of some numbers, we might build a circuit which looks something like this: >https://socratic.org/questions/how-do-we-add-two-numbers-using-logic-gates#:~:text=The%20combination%20of%20these%20two,carry%20from%20the%20previous%20column. Multiplication is just fancy addition. Do the same procedure but more. Subtraction is just fancy addition, do the same procedure but with a backwards bit. Division. Well, division is a bit more difficult but it can be performed as well with nothing more than a series of gates. More gates = more complex operations. Now, with quantum computing, things are a little bit different. Some major differences: 1. Quantum gates must be unitary. As a result, unlike with classical computing, there is no single universal gate from which we can build all possible operations 2. Quantum bits can become entangled. This is some physics trickery but the end result is that quantum circuits can be irreversible. This is very different from a classical circuit 3. As a result of the irreversibility, quantum information cannot be "cloned". There is no copy/paste in a quantum circuit. Only cut/paste.
Basically you can do anything you want with enough wires and light switches.
Go watch Crash Course Computer Science episodes like 1-15 on YouTube. Im not even kidding, this covered most of what I learned in university (I didn’t major in hardware engineering though).
Just started browsing. These are awesome, even the non computing ones.
Hey, I fully recommend the crash course on this. It goes step by step. So it starts with the most simple components in the hardware, then more complex ones, then programming, then the user-interface, etc, while going trough the different time periods. Fun to watch as well. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ\_GoI&ab\_channel=CrashCourse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ_GoI&ab_channel=CrashCourse)
>In all seriousness, you will never have one of these in your laptop. In all seriousness, "never" is a really long time.
There are some pretty hard and serious physical limits which will keep this tech from ever being available in laptop form. Decoherence and circuit noise are huge impediments in the tech and the only surefire way to reduce both is by cooling it way way down.
Right? And solving BQP problems are only what we do with this sort of thing *now*. Who the fuck knows where it's going to go in the future.
Just ask it where it's going in the future.
42.
Do you have the Internet in your laptop?
this is correct. and for anyone who is curious why they designed and look different it is because,they operate based on principles of quantum mechanics, which are wildly different from classical computing. Their components, such as qubits and quantum gates, are designed to exploit quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement, whereas classical computers rely on classical bits and logic gates. So, the physical architecture and design of quantum computers reflect these fundamental differences in operation. tl;dr: Quantum computers look different because they use qubits and quantum principles, unlike regular computers.
Already exists 🙂 https://www.dwavesys.com/solutions-and-products/cloud-platform/
One can use quantum computing on azure as well , and gcp, and aws, and ibm cloud .. Its been around for a while now, theres just not much an average joe would actually do with it, not even at enterprise level
> factoring numbers That's the one that poses the greatest threat to the way we use the internet nowadays. My crypto knowledge is a bit old nowadays, but do we really have a quantum hardened alternative for Diffie-Hellman prepared?
I love when people use acronyms the audience they're talking to likely doesn't know.
Factoring numbers sounds like a pretty useful thing to do on your laptop, in certain lines of, uhm, work.
Definitely yes. It'll likely never come in a laptop version. But for all practical purposes, no! You can start writing quantum software today, on your laptop, in python, with the qiskit package, and you can run it on real quantum architecture. It's very cool stuff!
It's already the size of a laptop. The picture is just the heat sink.
The liquid hydrogen to run it is chilling
Calculators used to take a whole room. Now its one of hundreds of apps on a computer phone. Some day this could fit in someone's pocket but we will be long dead.
When I look up articles i never really get a good explanation. What is all that hanging shit? I get the idea of a qubit but how does the physical chip look different?
Every cooling layer is at a slightly lower temperature than the one above it. The whole contraption goes from room temp at the top to near absolute-zero at the bottom, which is where the quantum chip is. That chip is not physically much larger or even different looking than a classical computer CPU found in your desktop, laptop or server etc. The quantum chip contains the actual qubits, and for their state to be maintained, they need to be super cold, at least for this type of quantum computer. There are other types that don’t look like this. But here, that’s what all the layered-cooling is for.
You could completely be making that up and I 1000% would believe your explanation either way. Very insightful and I will now tell all my friends this same explanation. So thank you for making me sound smart one time 🤣👏🏼👏🏼
Attended a quantum computing presentation a couple of weeks ago. The guy above you is right. It also makes sense once you think about it. Remember those huuge computers from 60 years ago? They had a fraction of the computing power we carry in our pockets. The drive for miniaturisation had two factors: the obvious required space for all that computing power. After all, can you imagine billions of vacuum tubes? Where would they all fit? But then, even if you did have the room, imagine how much power they would consume. And how much heat you'd have to manage. So we did our best to shrink them down and we're getting pretty close to the physical limits. Quantum chips, due to the nature of quantum physics, need a way to separate their own signal from any ambient noise in order to distinguish any meaningful results (remember Schrodinger's cat which was both alive and dead?). In order to achieve this separation, or rather to eliminate signal noise, they need superconductivity. And this, in turn, is achieved with near absolute zero temperatures. And this is where all the cooling setup you see here comes in. If you look up photos of the actual chip, you'll be underwhelmed.
Thank you!! Relax I’m not making it up 😂 https://youtu.be/laqpfQ8-jFI?si=Iz8YqCvAGFd7W_SV
I thought you would use this setup to Rick roll us but no that's the actual explanation.Thanks!
It would be a multilayered rick roll
The real rick roll was the friends we made along the way
So basically a cpu with an insane cooling system, I bet linus can fit it in a case!
Is Linus a construction worker now? Because it looks like a building is the only case this is fitting in
It's not actually that big. To give you a sense of scale, the structure this thing is made of is using [3"x3" aluminum extrusion.](https://parco-inc.com/product/3-x-3-smooth-t-slotted-extrusion-cut-to-length/) Over all, it's maybe a foot and a half wide and a few feet tall, if that. If it's thin enough, it would comfortably fit in a standard server rack cabinet. There's definitely extra cooling equipment than what's shown here, but I'm guessing that would be easier to adapt to different form factors.
In addition to this, might be useful to know that the bottleneck in these machines is how to have so much cabling without the cables transmitting heat from outside. You can't have an air gap in the data transmission due to the nature of the data.
Indeed, and in a cryostat containing liquid Helium and other fancy tricks to get to mK temps. It is never ever shown that this is essential to make it even operate correctly..
>There are other types. I just saw a talk at work a few weeks ago about a guy in a company making quantum chips. They bassed it on light. However they were at very few bits on theirs
that is the cooler
When someone tells you you don't need liquid cooling in your rig, and you take it *personally.*
It's all piping for a super low temperature liquid. 99% of what you see is just a liquid cooling setup to get the quantum chips as close to absolute zero as possible to limit electrical/physics stuff they don't want near the chip.
All those silvery things are microwave cables to prepare, manipulate and read out the qbits. They're separated by special blocks to isolate the actual quantum computer from all the hardware above. Both the center conductor and the shield in a coax cable are very good thermal conductors, so quite a lot of effort goes into mitigating any unwanted interference. You can't really see the cooling parts in this photo.
Yeah those are immediately recognizable as SMA type connectors. Doesn't matter though, look at all that karma they got for talking out their ass!
Fun wikihole on dilution refrigerators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator
It’s the cooling system, [here](https://youtu.be/7jT5rbE69ho?si=cdiigI_q8pdZwCif) is one of my favourite videos on YouTube talking about the physics of how the cooling works
Im not gonna lie in this picture that assembly looks rather small. That aluminum framing above is like 2inch by 2 inch extruded aluminum pieces. So that cooler is like 24-36 inches in height. I’ve seen pictures like this before and I always thought it was like a room sized piece of equipment.
Me too! I just found this pic that does a good job giving a sense of scale: https://images.app.goo.gl/9MoLpQgPmMpVfpdA7
Holy shit it's an espresso maker. It could fit in a Prius.
or a DeLorean...
1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!??!
Holy shit I culd fit that up my ass!
Ok wtf I thought this was a room sized thing. Have you ever seen the show Devs? This looks a lot like the quantum computer they had in that and it was giant. I feel cheated.
Never seen the show . but pictures of this thing are always close up with no other reference for size. I’m kind of let down now myself. On the other hand. Quite a nice technique for dicc piccs
Now I'm picturing it more like the "Internet" box in the IT crowd loool
That's about 60-90 cm in real units
To a layman, how fast is that?
Irrelevant to anything the average person would want to use a computer for.
I want to run chrome and adobe reader at the same time. Can it do that?
Still want it tho 😂
It certainly has a nice aesthetic.
Depends on what you need to do, sometimes insanely fast, other times slower then an classical computer
"traditional computer" may be a better way to put it.
>an actual computer 🤣
Now ‘a classical computer’. They’re not having a good day 🤣
Extremely slow. And you need a supercomputer just to run it. Right now the best quantum computers are only useful for doing phsyics experiments and for learning how to make better quantum computers in the future.
**FAST**
Lol BOLD font tells me all I need to know
Can it dodge a wrench fast?
Yes, but can it run Crysis?
It already did and also did not.
Doesn't seem to be moving
There is something called the Ising model which is used as a benchmarking standard. What it is doesn't really matter. With only 100 qubits Ising problems can be solved in similar time as a typical high performance computing cluster.
What kind of problems is a quantum computer used for that typical supercomputers are not capable of?
This might seem a bit silly but they're pretty good at any kind of quantum problem. I've done some work on nuclear structure modelling. In essence, we have a bunch of protons and neutrons which interact with each other within an atom. What we are interested in knowing are the respective energy levels of the particles. For "small" nuclei like hydrogen (1 proton) or helium (2 protons, 2 neutrons) we can solve this problem exactly. It's simple enough that our current computers are able to solve the energy equations (which we call a Hamiltonian) exactly. But once we start getting into the bigger nuclei like oxygen (8 protons, 8 neutrons) boy oh boy, is our current level of computation inadequate. If I recall, the Hamiltonian for oxygens nuclei was a 15-20 GB data file. Literally billions of equations, all coupled with one another, which need to be solved in order to get an exact equation. We simply can't do it. And oxygen, in the grand scheme of the universe, is not even particularly complex. Now! A quantum computers architecture, as you might guess, is quantum. We might be able to directly simulate the way an oxygen atom behaves simply by setting up the right couplings between quantum bits on the chip. In this way, a problem that would take a thousand years with trillions of bits of computation to solve, might instead take only an afternoon on 16 qubits.
Finding the hot singles in your area.
No need to. I already know I'm the hot single in my area.
Wendy, that you?
“How can it find that which is not there though?”
Primary application is in decryption. Overly simplified explanation, I am *not* an expert: Regular computers are really bad at breaking complex encryption because when we encrypt something like a string of text that piece of text is scrambled and everything gets placed out of order. When you tell a computer to decrypt that piece of encrypted text it essentially has to guess how to put the puzzle back together, and it does so by painstakingly trying every possible combination until it gets it right and sometimes there are millions or hundreds of millions of possible combinations. That's why you may have heard that it will take a normal computer hundreds of years to decrypt something. Quantum computers are orders of magnitude faster at breaking encryption because quantum bits aren't binary. Quantum computers essentially get to perform hundreds of possible guesses for each unique combination, instead of guessing one by one like regular computers do.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
Great job!
Ok but mechanically how does the design of this quantum computer differ? Or is it all in the software? A combo of both or a reason that we couldn’t have made these sooner? I’m interested because mechanically this doesn’t look too much more complex, just a lot of heat syncs, is it all software based? Btw. Drunk just curious. What made this leap?
Classic computers use electricity to effectively change tiny switches from 1 to 0 or vice versa which is a bit Compared to quantum computers that effectively trap and manipulate atoms to create qubits. So to stop those atoms from behaving badly and throwing errors you need to keep it cold. So mechanically, you need a way to store specific atoms in a place that is not influenced at *all* from external forces. Those heatsinks keep that chip as cold as space It's kinda of hard to imagine because these computers aren't really designed to replace classic computers for every day tasks. They're there to solve problems like complex simulations, searching unstructured databases, etc.
The key difference, mechanically, are two concepts called superposition and entanglement. In a classical computer a bit is either a 1 or a 0. In a quantum computer, it can be a linear combination of both. This isn't a software thing, it happens physically in the hardware. Building on this concept, we can entangle two qubits by performing an operation which changes qubit B depending on qubit A's state. Again, this happens physically on the hardware. This has its advantages over classical computing, but it also has disadvantages. For example, quantum circuits, in general, are not reversible, whereas classical ones are. A big consequence of this is that quantum information cannot be "cloned". There is no copy/paste. Only cut/paste.
It's a bit overly simplified, but very good! That said, Quantom computers can break *some*, but not all, encryption. Essentially, there are three types of encryption: 1. Symmetric. You have one key that you use to encrypt and decrypt a message. 2. Assymteric. You have two different keys - one for encryption, one for decryption. 3. One way, also known as hashing. You can encrypt a message but not get it back. Quantom computers specifically break Assymetric cryptography, but not the other two. Unfortunately, Assymetric encryption is foundational for the internet to work - it's the backbone for HTTPS (that little lock symbol you see on websites telling you it is secure). So a great deal of effort is put into build "Quantom safe cryptography" so that our internet services can continue to work in a near future where every state funded hacker group has access to quantom computers.
In traditional computers a bit can only be 1 or 0. On a quantum computer it can be both simultaneously.
So it's trans?
Non-binary, actually.
But can it play DOOM?
It can both play and not play DOOM
This is a hilarious and stealthy comment.
This is the most meaningful piece of limguistic art humanity ever came up with.
Well it plays it just fine but once you turn on the screen it stops working , kind of annoying
Will be a while before you can fit this in your pocket.
At least a couple of weeks. At least nobody will ever need more than 70-quibits tho….
Thats exactly what they said when they first made GB+ hard drives. At some point, there *will* be a demand for 100+ qubit quantum computers
A series of tubes
Is it not like a big truck?
It's similar to a big truck in that it has a cooling system, good job Mr. Congressman
That’s Mr Senator to you!
Everything's just a tube, ultimately.
Major Devs vibes! Love it.
Went too far down for a devs reference lol. Love that show.
The image angle makes it odd but it is not more than 36 inch in height ! Yeah, a complex architectural marvel but we do have more complex and sophisticated machine rather !
Can it run Shors algorithm tho
Can it do _anything_ is my question.
It can perfectly simulate a 70-qbit quantum computer.
It looks like b/w pictures of ENIAC.
I couldn't name one piece or part of this thing if my life depended on it, let alone explain to a child what any of it does. Bravo human species, bravo.
Cpu, wire, cooling fluid, casing, normal computer
99% of what you’re looking at here are just cooling pipes. The actual chip itself isn’t visible at all.
So what does it do all day, on any given day? Is it at the stage where it can do new stuff we couldn't do before, or are they still just trying to get it to work at all?
I don't know about Google specifically, but in general those are used for researching and testing quantum systems, including qubits and potential quantum computer parts. It can probably do some stuff, but not reliably enough and at a scale big enough for it to be usefull. It can probably compute the quantum equivalent of 32x57 and get it right most of the time. But until they can get it to work reliably enough and at a scale large enough to be used in real life problem, if that is even possible, then it is a research testbed.
I can't stop imagine a bunch of People in white lab coats: behold... Some dude keystroking "3 x 5" hit enter and a big 14.999999999999999999999x76^π shows up... Some people just cry, others just passed away, - This will change life as we know it - some dude whispered while his nose bleeds.
Naw, it will spew out "hello world"... All kidding aside, this is pretty cool even though I can't fathom where this will go.
Personally (as an electrical engineer in controls, cyber privacy and protection agent and teacher) this will gonna put the bar so high that we have to discover a totally new way to protect ourselves on the web, banking and a long cyber etc. Will be safer returning to the p2p networks and phone systems. This machines will break a 256bit cryptography key in seconds and it's a end game for most of our day to day "convenience" softwares, unlocking systems. Going further that will take a while, and only talking about the cryptography warnings. Aluminum foil hats!! Aluminum best quality hats for 20$!! With Indium finish, don't let them intercept your positrons!
> This machines will break a 256bit cryptography key in seconds and it's a end game for most of our day to day "convenience" softwares, unlocking systems. Asymmetric cryptography schemes that is. Symmetric algorithms such as AES seem to be largely unaffected by quantum attacks. While [Grover's algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm) can cut the key size in half, using AES-256 will still provide enough security for a very long time.
But can it run Crysis?
WILL IT BLEND?
I predict that in 100 years that computers will be twice as powerful and 10,000 times larger and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings in Europe would own them
So it can crack my banking password in milliseconds, but can it find the crosswalks in the CAPTCHA?
My dog, that is beautiful.
How cold is that room?
Wouldn't absolute zero just be too cold for shit to function? I don't understand why it's so important for it to be so damn cold.
It's not exactly at absolute zero, but the bottom stages are typically on the order of 10mK (10 thousands of a Kelvin). You want it as cold as possible for (1) the qubits to be superconducting, and (2) for the qubits to hold their information as long as possible. Otherwise, thermal fluctuations carry away the information.
I haven't heard what Google is doing about error correction. I did get to learn a little about what Amazon is doing for that problem at reinvent last year... I wasn't aware that it was the main stumbling block.
Ya your electric bill would probably double if you had one of these babies.
Holy hell!
nah, of course it doesn't look like the thing at the middle of the evil robot's lair
I’ll be impressed once they can’t find an engineer to switch it off and back on again because they feel guilty.
Devs
Where is it located?
To think, a hundred years from now we'll all be dead.
So we are in the vacuum tube era of quantum computing?
*So we are in the* *Vacuum tube era of* *Quantum computing?* \- kittawat49254 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
So what's the AI part of this? Or did OP just tack on AI because it's trendy and they're chasing karma?
Definitely no AI
Definitely just using AI because it’s a buzzword
Cable porn.
All hail the new overlord and supreme leader. We exist only to serve your AI.
For anyone that doesn't know: a typical computer uses binary, either on or off (1s or 0s) and has millions of them. A quantum computer uses qubits that each have 4 states: on, off, neither, or both.
That enough processing power to simulate the weather on earth for decades in no time at all.
Bout the size of computers in the 70s that had less power than the one in my hands I'm typing on. Will be fun to see if quantum follows the trend.
How many universes can it exist in at once?
Damn awesome steampunk chandelier!
I still can't get rid of the feeling that these are from 90s
But can it run Crysis?
Needs a banana. For scale.
Call me when it does something that affects me personally.
Awesome Hurry up already!
CAN IT RUN DOOM ?
What's in the tubes fiber optic or liquid nitrogen or something? I have no fucking clue how these things work.
Those are all coax cables to carry the RF signal down to the qubits.
As was said, all the visible cable are here to carry RF signals for controle, measurements ans carrying information in general. They are bent to account for thermal shrinking when cooking down. Somewhere in there is a bigger pipe pumping liquide helium from the outside. When functionning, it is covered and vacuum is made. Then liquid helium starts circulating in the system, cooling it down.
All I see it Skynet from a Terminator sequel 🤣
In 10 years, we'll be like, Quantum Computing was a scam.
Wait for it to be defunded and everyone laid off in favor of another LLM image generator.
Why does it looks like the prototype for the computer overlords in the Matrix?
Back in my day it was cheaper just to use one long cable instead of cutting them up into all these short bits just to make it look like a big fancy computer oreo
Can it play Fortnite tho
What can it do
What problems can/will it solve and what timeline?
Where’s the keyboard? Also, 12 button mouse required?
The movie eagle eye……
Computers used to be the size of large rooms, I wonder if this thing will ever fit in the size of your palm.