Google Identifies Low Noise 'Phase Transition' In Its Quantum Processor (arstechnica.com) 15
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in 2019, Google made waves by claiming it had achieved what has been called "quantum supremacy" -- the ability of a quantum computer to perform operations that would take a wildly impractical amount of time to simulate on standard computing hardware. That claim proved to be controversial, in that the operations were little more than a benchmark that involved getting the quantum computer to behave like a quantum computer; separately, improved ideas about how to perform the simulation on a supercomputer cut the time required down significantly.
But Google is back with a new exploration of the benchmark, described in a paper published in Nature on Wednesday. It uses the benchmark to identify what it calls a phase transition in the performance of its quantum processor and uses it to identify conditions where the processor can operate with low noise. Taking advantage of that, they again show that, even giving classical hardware every potential advantage, it would take a supercomputer a dozen years to simulate things.
But Google is back with a new exploration of the benchmark, described in a paper published in Nature on Wednesday. It uses the benchmark to identify what it calls a phase transition in the performance of its quantum processor and uses it to identify conditions where the processor can operate with low noise. Taking advantage of that, they again show that, even giving classical hardware every potential advantage, it would take a supercomputer a dozen years to simulate things.
Please embargo these news stories (Score:1)
Simple request: Just embargo and hold these news stories from general release until Quantum computers are available for purchase by large corporations and run reliably for 5 years without millions of dollars spent on maintenance.
Same goes for the regular hype about human brain -> computer interface. A trickle of products over the last 40 years yet no general purpose augment a human brain with a computer has happened, yet that general purpose augmentation is always listed or hinted at in each news articl
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Ah, because new research isn't suitable for a "News for Nerds" site until it's boringly practical. Got it.
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If it isn't at least practical for even one person with the access and knowledge then it isn't news yet.
Their approach is so much of a dead end that they went back to find ways to work around the criticism instead of just implementing something else. You only do that when you can't make something else work. I don't know what you call that but it certainly isn't supremacy.
You'll know you've actually got quantum supremacy when your next move isn't to give a shit about the criticism or even to publish but to i
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Anyone know the correct term for these "appeal to a grand objective" phrases used in marketing and news articles?
I think "Big Lie" covers it nicely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Ah, so you're a "new battery tech" reader!
Will a Commodore 64 beat it, again? (Score:2)
Probably.
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I would expect that an Abacus can already do it.
metric (Score:2)
even giving classical hardware every potential advantage, it would take a supercomputer a dozen years to simulate things.
What kind of metric is that? Simulate things? This is why Nature is going downhill.
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Indeed. And it is even worse: The lie is based around the fantasy that a QC is somehow simulating itself. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and that is not how you quantify computing power. Using that metric, a glass of water has more computing power than the largest supercomputer ever built. It is just not computing power that is useful in any way. Quite like "simulating" a QC is not useful for anything.
At this time, much the QC field has apparently gone the same way as much of the AI field: If you
It is a lie, nothing else (Score:3)
Yes, there is (some) research being done. But claims as to an actually useful computing devices are simply direct and shameless lies, nothing else. At this time it is still not clear whether that actually useful "QC"-type computing device is even possible in this universe. Scalability of these things is so abysmally bad and stability for longer computations is too, that it is quite possible the only thing that a QC will ever be better at "simulating" is a QC. That is, of course, just another lie. If you take a modern computer and actually claim it is a simulation for what the electronics in there do, you suddenly have a "computing mechanism" that is massively more powerful, and that would be the actually "fair" comparison. Obviously, it is a comparison that makes no sense at all.
Hence, nothing to see here, Google just lying a bit more about how great it is.
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