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Quantum computing suffers from hype problems | MIT Technology Review


The qubit systems we have today are a huge scientific achievement, but they don’t bring us any closer to having a quantum computer that can solve a problem anyone is interested in. . It’s like trying to make today’s best smartphones using vacuum tubes from the early 1900s. You can put 100 tubes together and establish the principle that if somehow somehow you can make 10 billion of those tubes come together in a tight, seamless way, you can achieve all sorts of miracles. What was missing, however, was the breakthrough of integrated circuits and CPUs that led to smartphones — it took 60 years of very difficult engineering to go from the invention of the transistor to the smartphone without Is there any new physics involved in this process?

The fact that there are ideas, and I played several roles in developing theories for these ideas, to bypass quantum error correction by using much more stable qubits, in an approach known as topological quantum computing. Microsoft is work on this method. But it turns out that developing topological quantum computing hardware is also a huge challenge. It is unclear whether extended quantum error correction or topological quantum computation (or something else, like a combination of the two) will be the ultimate winner.

Smart physicists as we all know (disclosure: I’m a physicist), and some physicists are also very good at finding acronyms that sound realistic. The great difficulty in eliminating discreteness has led to the impressive acronym NISQ for “noisy intermediate-scale quantum” computers – with the idea that small sets of noisy physical qubits can do something useful and better than a classic calculator. I’m not sure what this object is: How noisy is it? How many qubits are there? Why is this a calculator? What worthy problems could such a NISQ machine solve?

ONE recent lab experiment at Google observed some predictive aspects of quantum dynamics (known as “time crystals”) using 20 noisy superconducting qubits. The experiment was an impressive demonstration of electronic control techniques, but it did not show a computational advantage over conventional computers, which could easily simulate time crystals in quantities similar virtual qubits. It also doesn’t reveal anything about the underlying physics of time crystals. NISQ’s other wins are recent simulations random quantum circuitis a highly specialized task with no commercial value whatsoever.

Using NISQ is certainly a great new fundamental research idea — it could help with physics research in fundamental areas like quantum dynamics. But despite the continued hype of NISQ coming from various quantum computer startups, the potential for commercialization remains unclear. I’ve seen vague claims about how NISQ can be used for quick optimization or even for AI training. I’m no expert on optimization or AI, but I asked the experts and they were equally bewildered. I asked researchers involved in various startups how NISQ would optimize any difficult task involving real-world applications, and I explained his complex answer. they basically said that since we don’t understand well how classical machine learning and AI work, maybe NISQ can do this faster. Possibly, but this is hoping for the best, not technology.

There are proposals to use small-scale quantum computers for drug design, as a way to quickly calculate molecular structures, which is a confusing application because quantum chemistry is a small part of the whole. process. Equally disconcerting are claims that quantum computers will soon help finance. There is no technical literature that conclusively demonstrates that small quantum computers, let alone NISQ machines, can lead to significant optimizations in algorithmic trading or risk assessment or arbitrage. or hedging or targeting and predicting or trading assets or profiling risk. However, this hasn’t stopped some investment banks from jumping into the quantum computing wars.

A true quantum computer would have applications unimaginable today, just as when the first transistor was produced in 1947, no one could have predicted that it would eventually lead to electricity. like smartphones and laptops. I am all for hope and a big believer in quantum computing as a potentially disruptive technology, but claiming it will start generating millions of dollars in profits for companies actually selling a service or a product in the near future is very confusing for me. How?

Quantum computers are truly one of the most important developments not only in physics but in all of the sciences. But “entanglement” and “superposition” are not magic wands that we can shake and expect to transform technology in the near future. Quantum mechanics is really weird and counterintuitive, but by itself it doesn’t guarantee revenue or profit.

A decade ago and beyond, I was often asked when I thought a real quantum computer would be built. (Interestingly, I no longer have to face this question because the hype of quantum computers has convinced people that these systems already exist, or are only very recent.) My definitive answer has always been I don’t know. Predicting the future of technology is impossible – it will happen when it happens. One can try to draw an analogy with the past. It took the airline industry more than 60 years to go from the Wright brothers to jumbo jets carrying hundreds of passengers thousands of miles. The immediate question is where on that timeline should quantum computing development, as it is today, be placed. Was it with the Wright brothers in 1903? The first jets circa 1940? Or maybe we’re still going back to the early 16th century, to Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine? I do not know. No body eles.

Sankar Das Sarma is the director of Center for condensed matter theory at the University of Maryland, College Park.



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