Quantum Supremacy

[monabri]

Sounds like the name for a new film with "Jason Bourne "! The picture in the article looks more like it could be starring Mssrs Heath & Robinson

[Julian]

Sky News are reporting that Google engineers have achieved 'Quantum Supremacy', although it's not on their (or the BBC's) website.

CNET are carrying it though:

Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world's top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online this week, the Financial Times reported Friday, and said the quantum computer's processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM's Summit, the world's most powerful commercial computer, Google reportedly said.

If true, surely a game changer?

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-report ... supremacy/

I can't pretend to understand it in any great depth but from my relatively superficial understanding then yes, once mature it does have the potential to be a game-changer. Right now, even if this is demonstrated to have truly achieved quantum supremacy, these are still quite exotic beasts that require extremely low operating temperatures (close to absolute zero) in order to reduce noise and allow the quantum bits to retain their states for long enough for a calculation to complete. It's going to be a while before we'll be buying these in PC World, either with or without the extended warranty.

As well as the potential good stuff mentioned (drug discovery etc) there is also a scary dark side. One thing they will be very good at is extracting the factors from arbitrary very long numbers. The fact that it is immensely computationally intensive for conventional computers to do this, in effect impractical for sufficiently big numbers, is the foundation on which current encryption technologies are based. Quantum computing could demolish that foundation at a stroke which will be interesting to say the least. I assume some other methods will come along to replace it but there might well be a transition period where, in the arms race between hackers and users (where government agencies such as NSA & GCHQ could be considered both), certain hackers might have an overwhelming advantage for some period of time. Luckily, for the already mentioned reasons about how exotic these systems are right now and are likely to remain for a while, I suspect those "certain hackers" will be relatively few and probably not interested in hijacking my Twitter account.

- Julian

[PhaseThree]

Sky News are reporting that Google engineers have achieved 'Quantum Supremacy', although it's not on their (or the BBC's) website.

CNET are carrying it though:

Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world's top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online this week, the Financial Times reported Friday, and said the quantum computer's processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM's Summit, the world's most powerful commercial computer, Google reportedly said.

If true, surely a game changer?

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-report ... supremacy/

I can't pretend to understand it in any great depth but from my relatively superficial understanding then yes, once mature it does have the potential to be a game-changer. Right now, even if this is demonstrated to have truly achieved quantum supremacy, these are still quite exotic beasts that require extremely low operating temperatures (close to absolute zero) in order to reduce noise and allow the quantum bits to retain their states for long enough for a calculation to complete. It's going to be a while before we'll be buying these in PC World, either with or without the extended warranty.

As well as the potential good stuff mentioned (drug discovery etc) there is also a scary dark side. One thing they will be very good at is extracting the factors from arbitrary very long numbers. The fact that it is immensely computationally intensive for conventional computers to do this, in effect impractical for sufficiently big numbers, is the foundation on which current encryption technologies are based. Quantum computing could demolish that foundation at a stroke which will be interesting to say the least. I assume some other methods will come along to replace it but there might well be a transition period where, in the arms race between hackers and users (where government agencies such as NSA & GCHQ could be considered both), certain hackers might have an overwhelming advantage for some period of time. Luckily, for the already mentioned reasons about how exotic these systems are right now and are likely to remain for a while, I suspect those "certain hackers" will be relatively few and probably not interested in hijacking my Twitter account.

- Julian

There is a very active field of reasearch and development known as "Post Quantum Cryptography" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography. There are a lot big companies working on this (including the one I currently consult for) with an eye on making sure that Quantum computing systems don't kill their business model. A good question at the next shareholders meeting would be "How does your company utilise encryption and what measures have you taken to ensure these systems will remain secure in a quantum future"

And if anyone is thinking that Quantum computers are esoteric constructions only availabe to governments and multi-billion tech companies, IBM have made their latest version publicly available on their cloud computing service. All you need is a credit card.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/0 ... the-cloud/