First hybrid quantum supercomputer Reimei activated in Japan | Hacker News Reader

First hybrid quantum supercomputer Reimei activated in Japan

interestingengineering.com

26 pointswallflower7 comments

What can you even do with 20 qubits?

You can simulate 20 qubits with 2*21 floats. So nothing you couldn't do with your laptop.

A 20-qubit quantum computer is not yet capable of outperforming classical supercomputers for most real-world problems. It is a first fully operational hybrid quantum supercomputer. Most likely to run tests in the real world scenarios.

> A 20-qubit quantum computer is not yet capable of outperforming classical supercomputers for most real-world problems.

This isn't the right way to think about this. No amount of qubits would allow you to outperform a classical computer on "most" real world problems. That is not how quantum computers work.

However you are right - anything quantum right now is proof of concept for the engineering problems, not being problem. (If you are being generous. If you are being less generous its about creating PR to get people's money)

Obtain and spend millions in grants.

Why are quantum computing news always so disingenuous? If you read that and didn't know better, you'd think quantum is officially there and ready to change the world. When in reality, 20 qubits can be perfectly simulated with 2^21 floats on any classical computers. This is just a dumb PR stunt.

A few main reasons:

- Quantum Hardware is tough scale up (not impossible) due to decoherence of quantum systems, you need quantum error correction.

- Finding an application that justifies it economically (against SOTA methods in classical part) is hard except for a few areas, (Cryptography, simulation of quantum systems that are not already solved by classical simulation methods)

- Hype seems to be working (see the stock prices of several quantum companies after the announcement of Willow chip, one of which had only the word quantum in its name despite not being QC hardware company) (which I dont approve of)

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