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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

>"These are physics experiments, not computers. Claiming that it’s a computer misrepresents what we’re really working with. Every time you see “quantum computer” mentally substitute “physics experiment”, which is what’s actually being discussed."

This needs to be a disclaimer on every discussion of "quantum computing."

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This seems like a rather pedantic distinction unless you go with "Computer = von neumann architecture", in which case the category becomes rather strict (Are FPGAs/analogue computers physics experiments too?). If we assemble a physics experiment to obtain a result that exists at a meaningful level of abstraction from the physical processes themselves (like factoring a prime number using quantum processes, or adding numbers using transistors), it seems appropriate to call this experiment a computer.

Were the first point-contact transistors that were developed in the 1940s at Bell Labs and that consisted of a piece of gold foil stretched over a plastic wedge which was then cut by hand at the tip and pressed against a block of germanium stacked on a metal base, a computer or an experiment?

What were they used for?

Experiments to show that solid-state materials were capable of amplifying or switching one electric voltage/current with another.

I'm not disputing that these later became the building blocks for computers, just as the quantum gate experiments being conducted in laboratories today may become the building blocks for quantum computers in the future. But that's not where we are now.

Then i wouldn't call them computers, just like i wouldn't call experiments with single quantum gates computers. But if a physics experiment utilizes quantum processes to factorize a number (even if it's only the number 21), then I'd call that a computation, and the experimental setup a computer.

Also, I like how in those experiments they are trying to fight wave function collapse without having any physical model of wave function collapse.

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