Comment by r33b33 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by r33b33 | Hacker News Reader

Let's talk about things that actually matter - where to invest in post-quantum world?

I'll keep this short.

- Google’s Willow quantum chip significantly outpaces current supercomputers, solving tasks in minutes that would otherwise take billions of years.

- Hypothesis: Accelerating advancements in tech and AI could lead to quantum supremacy arriving sooner than the 2030s, contrary to expert predictions.

- Legacy banking systems, being centralized, could transition faster to post-quantum-safe encryption by freezing transfers, re-checking processes, and migrating to new protocols in a controlled manner.

- Decentralized cryptocurrencies face bigger challenges:Hard forks are difficult to coordinate across a decentralized network.

- Transitioning to quantum-safe algorithms could lead to longer transaction signatures and significantly higher fees, eroding trust in the system.

- If quantum computers compromise current cryptography, tangible assets (e.g., real estate, stock indices) may retain more value compared to digital assets like crypto.

Thoughts?

> Google’s Willow quantum chip significantly outpaces current supercomputers, solving tasks in minutes that would otherwise take billions of years.

This is the point that was disputed in the article, and you're instead taking it for granted.

About your first point, "outpaces current supercomputers, solving tasks in minutes that would otherwise take billions of years.", that is the point of the article. They used their computer to model a system that can't be verified with a classic computer algorithm, so no, we are not certain that it is solving anything.

About the other points, quantum computers are massively different from classic ones, so much that there are very few algorithms for them. For example, GPUs are faster at matrix multiplication because it can be implemented independent parallel threads, but they suck at other problemas. A quantum computer is good for running quantum algorithms [1], of which there are very few at the moment, and most of them are useful for simulating quantum physics. It is not a "faster" classic computer in any way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_algorithm

> Legacy banking systems,

From what I know about banking world, though second hand, having been working in payment processing systems I can say with confidence that it’s not the compute that’s holding them back.

It doesn't take billions of years to generate a small sampling of random (or random-looking) numbers.

Quantum computing only solves certain classes of tasks faster, not all tasks, not most tasks, only a tiny amount of tasks.

Actually, Grover’s algorithm would speed up a wide range of tasks. Hardly a tiny amount.

Only marginally, and it's going to take a loooooooong time until you'll have a quantum computer the size of today's classical computers to actually see any improvement from Grover's algorithm.

Shor's is a completely different matter entirely: the difference between exponential and linear time is so huge that even a comparatively tiny QC (only a few million qubits) would significantly outpace the largest classical supercomputers put together on this specific problem.

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