AWS Brings Quantum Computing To the Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping to bring quantum computing to the cloud, with the company lifting the lid off three initiatives at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. ZDNet reports: The first is Amazon Braket. Amazon Braket is a new, fully managed AWS service that the company has touted as enabling scientists, researchers, and developers to begin experimenting with computers from quantum hardware providers, such as D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti. AWS said the service lets customers explore, evaluate, and experiment with quantum computing hardware to gain in-house experience as they plan for the future. It's a single development environment to build quantum algorithms, test them on simulated quantum computers, and try them on a range of different quantum hardware architectures.

Furthering its quantum mission, the company's new AWS Center for Quantum Computing aims to bring together quantum computing experts from Amazon, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and other academic research institutions to work together on the research and development of new quantum computing technologies. The cloud giant hopes the R&D will result in the solving of real-world problems through quantum technologies. The centre, hosted at Caltech, is aiming to provide the opportunity for customers to develop the necessary skills, and identify when quantum is an appropriate solution, as well as learn how they can design algorithms and discover new applications.

Meanwhile the new Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab is a program that connects customers with quantum computing experts from Amazon and its technology and consulting partners. It is expected the lab will help all involved identify practical uses of quantum computing, and accelerating the development of quantum applications. Lab programs will combine hands-on educational workshops with brainstorming sessions to help customers "work backwards" from business challenges, and then go step-by-step through the process of using quantum computers, AWS said.

PKI and x509 certs are now cracked.

[pimpsoftcom]

We need post-quantum cryptography.

Re:

[JcMorin]

Anything to support that? I think quantum is going nowhere and has no real life utility. https://spectrum.ieee.org/comp... [ieee.org]

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[Mr0bvious]

So, you're saying we're all using Quantum computers already?

Didn't think so.

As soon as a few thousand cubits work

[raymorris]

Shor's algorithm requires at minimum 4N+2 cubits, plus stuff that doesn't actually work in real-life quantum computers.

Putting aside the very practical stuff, a 2048-bit key needs at least 8,194 cubits. The largest quantum computer in existence is 53 qubits. Adding a few qubits is really, really hard. So there is a ways to go.

* D-Wave machines do simulated quantum annealing. There may or may not be any problems for which D-Wave computers are after than ordinary computers. They aren't quantum computers in

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[gweihir]

May also well never happen. It looks very much like effort to add qbits is much worse than constant per qbit. May be quadratic (complexity of n-party communications) or worse.

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[raymorris]

It would be poetic balance of it turned out that building ever larger quantum computers is difficult enough that for a key to be secure, it needs to be around 2048 bits or so. That is, if it turned out that nobody short of perhaps the government of a superpower could afdord to built an 8,194 qubit quantum computer.

That feel a bit fanciful, but nature and math seems to tend to natural balance.

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[gweihir]

Indeed. Would not surprise me one bit. Nature tends to make things that have massive "strange" effects when scaled up very hard to scale up.

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[gweihir]

Complete nonsense. Nobody can even get a tiny crypto-signature into a QC these days. It will be at least decades, may be centuries and may well be never that "Quantum Computing" can break currently secure cryptography.

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[chrish]

These can't actually run Shor's algorithm (or Grover's). The largest (in terms of advertised q-bits) are the D-Wave systems, which aren't general quantum computers... they use a technique called quantum annealing, which is applicable to some algorithms, but not Shor's and Grover's. I think they're good for simulating protein folding or DNA or massive fluid/gas simulations?

At any rate, quantum-safe cryptography is coming:

* https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects... [nist.gov] is currently in Round 2; working source code and spe

Well if its anything like regular AWS

[Indy1]

it'll be full of bots, spam, and other assorted crap.

https://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/l... [spamhaus.org]

Is it useful?

[msauve]

Maybe yes, maybe no. You won't know until you try.

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[JcMorin]

...and they been trying for decades with no success.

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[Empiric]

The sound of the "whoosh" in superposition was really strange.

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[Bite The Pillow]

If you try, record the result, and erase it before you observe it, you still won't know. Boom, headshot.

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[Pseudonym]

The intersection of people who know enough about quantum computing and know enough about AWS is pretty close to the null set.

IBM already did this

[crdotson]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Q_Experience

Asking /.: How do you manage the risks of AWS?

[BAReFO0t]

I have never tried AWS, because the idea of having computations billed by run time, wher you don't know bow much it will cost you *before* running it, is hair-raisingly dangerous.

Let alone have a public server running on that, where every idiot can DOS you into poverty.

Is this solved at all with these "cloud" providers? If yes, then how?

I mean getting the price to pay in advance, like normal. No ifs, no buts, no hidden costs.

Not that I would ever be literally mentally disabled enouh to trust third parties I

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[cusco]

So you know nothing about cloud computing but have decided that it's useless. I'd say you are mentally disabled enough.