Comment by cjs_ac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cjs_ac | Hacker News Reader

> YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y. and AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced plans to develop next-generation computing architectures based on the combination of quantum computers and high-performance computing, known as quantum-centric supercomputing. AMD and IBM are collaborating to develop scalable, open-source platforms that could redefine the future of computing, leveraging IBM's leadership in developing the world's most performant quantum computers and software, and AMD's leadership in high-performance computing and AI accelerators.

Has anyone found a real-world problem that's best solved by a quantum computer that isn't cryptography? I exclude cryptography because if the only thing these machines are good for is breaking ciphers, then governments won't let anyone else buy one, will they?

Materials Science and Drug Discovery would suddenly become a lot easier, along with financial modelling (of our entire society possibly) and logistics/supply chains.

They would also be much better at training ML and doing pattern recognition.

Basically anything that requires a massively parallel computation on undeterminable states that are only clear in hindsight. They’re really important actually and its only an unfortunate side-effect that the same solution breaks all our cryptography.

(of course: the offensive wings of our defence ministries really enjoy that side-effect)

Better financial modeling? Oh boy, who’s ready for quantum dynamic pricing to really squeeze your wallet to the max

> Basically anything that requires a massively parallel computation on undeterminable states that are only clear in hindsight.

If only. This description makes it sound as if quantum computers could help efficiently solve all problems in NP, which is not believed to be true.

Those "undeterminable" states need some non-trivial algebraic structure so that destructive interference of states can do its magic in a quantum computer. Finding such a structure is incredibly difficult, if it exists at all.

Basically anything that requires a massively parallel computation on undeterminable states that are only clear in hindsight.

From https://scottaaronson.blog/ :

“If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel.”

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