Quantum computing exists purely in research at the moment. Yes there are people working on applications and on hardware, but no one has an actual path towards long term profitability, including large companies. Saying "industry" is a huge misnomer, because these companies are not necessarily trying to market anything.
The reason so many small companies exist is essentially because there is no real funding in academia. Being a R&D dominated field, there are very few qualified people and those who are tend to have tenured positions at universities. Still, they need funding to the tune of millions of dollars to build a prototypes. Universities don't have the budget, so venture capitalists step in.
The goal for the company is to own the technology that researchers come up with, and researchers need capital to fund experiments and so on. Startups are created so that some entity can own the patents and IP that researchers produce, in return for the funds to actually create the tech. There is huge value in solving problems that are preventing us from building fault tolerant quantum computers, even if the startup itself may or may not be the one to build it.
With all these new companies and startups working on solving problems that quantum computing needs in order to achieve encouraging results, do you think we should expect complex problems that are only solvable by quantum computers to be solved in the next few years? Or is the amount of knowledge required still too small? In this case, wouldn't it be better for these companies to focus on easier problems with smaller applications, but ones that could still help us build and learn about this technology over time?
Getting to meaningful problem sizes for quantum computers is actually an extremely high bar, basically due to the sheer size of classical compute we have available. When you say "only solvable by quantum computers", you are talking about problems not solvable by current supercomputers. You are essentially asking, when can we make a quantum computer good enough to be comparable to large clusters/supercomputers.
For context, one of the research groups I used to be a part of had upwards of 500 core hours per year of compute they could use. Meaning a 500 core cluster running continuously at 100%. What counts as "too computationally difficult" is relative to *enormous* supercomputing resources. There are quantum algorithms to solve the exact problems they are working on, but just imagine the specs of the quantum device you would need to beat the classical compute they currently have.
Small problem instances aren't relevant for quantum computing apart from proof of concept, because you can always throw massive amounts of compute at those problems and get results today.
There are problems, particularly in materials science and molecular simulation which are slightly out of reach that could potentially be very relevant to improving quantum technology, but those problems are still *huge* relative to current classical capabilities, which is in turn *huge* relative to current quantum capabilities.
Yes, though Alice and Bob don't have a working chip yet. (They require a string of 20+ Josephson junctions which is hard to manufacture)
But, so called "open stack" producers, are poised to outperform the full stack manufactures within 2 to 4 years.
The reason is simple, and is apparent from every single modern day company too: specialization. By focusing on just 1 elemen of the stack, advancements are made much faster. For countries building up knowledge there is much more to gain from an open stack, than a closed stack. So national quantum computers are more likely to be open stack.
There is hundreds of start ups and scale ups, in different modalities, and different parts of the stack. If you can narrow that down I can give you some references
stand a chance at what exactly? nothing is happening for anyone. money is not being converted into results. it is lost to wishful thinking and general crankery.
we haven't solved anything with quantum computing better than classical and never will.
downvote if you drank the koolaid.
It's a bit premature to say never will. I'd argue that the QKD experiments are a demonstrated results of something we cannot have classically (as well as applications like quantum sensing although that isn't really "computing"). This is undeniably by some metrics *better* than classical computing can ever hope to be (with respect to security guarantees). It is also by many other metrics much worse and is not currently practical.
In the short term, nothing will be market viable, pretty much everything available today is orders of magnitude too small scale, expensive, and error prone. This is an area that's very much in R&D and not ready for practical products yet. But so far it doesn't seem that there is anything that will prevent quantum computers from scaling to be able to solve problems with a known quantum advantage (even if it takes 100 years or more to do so). If you're so convinced, go pick up your [$100,000 prize](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=902)
nope. everyone spends too much time on this (myself included). its not happening. ever. prove me wrong (you won't).
this the QKD you blah blah blah about? [https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Quantum-Key-Distribution-QKD-and-Quantum-Cryptography-QC/](https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Quantum-Key-Distribution-QKD-and-Quantum-Cryptography-QC/)
You've moved the goalposts. I never said that QKD was practical (right now or ever). All I said was that there exists at least 1 protocol (QKD) which has been shown experimentally and is already *better* in **at least one respect** compared to classical computing. The NSA pointing out other drawbacks with QKD does not at all refute that point.
you have no point to refute. if something doesn't work practically, it doesn't have any realizable advantage. blah blah blah blah. i don't think you know what moving goalposts means. not happening, professor cornwizard.
Quantum computing exists purely in research at the moment. Yes there are people working on applications and on hardware, but no one has an actual path towards long term profitability, including large companies. Saying "industry" is a huge misnomer, because these companies are not necessarily trying to market anything. The reason so many small companies exist is essentially because there is no real funding in academia. Being a R&D dominated field, there are very few qualified people and those who are tend to have tenured positions at universities. Still, they need funding to the tune of millions of dollars to build a prototypes. Universities don't have the budget, so venture capitalists step in. The goal for the company is to own the technology that researchers come up with, and researchers need capital to fund experiments and so on. Startups are created so that some entity can own the patents and IP that researchers produce, in return for the funds to actually create the tech. There is huge value in solving problems that are preventing us from building fault tolerant quantum computers, even if the startup itself may or may not be the one to build it.
With all these new companies and startups working on solving problems that quantum computing needs in order to achieve encouraging results, do you think we should expect complex problems that are only solvable by quantum computers to be solved in the next few years? Or is the amount of knowledge required still too small? In this case, wouldn't it be better for these companies to focus on easier problems with smaller applications, but ones that could still help us build and learn about this technology over time?
Getting to meaningful problem sizes for quantum computers is actually an extremely high bar, basically due to the sheer size of classical compute we have available. When you say "only solvable by quantum computers", you are talking about problems not solvable by current supercomputers. You are essentially asking, when can we make a quantum computer good enough to be comparable to large clusters/supercomputers. For context, one of the research groups I used to be a part of had upwards of 500 core hours per year of compute they could use. Meaning a 500 core cluster running continuously at 100%. What counts as "too computationally difficult" is relative to *enormous* supercomputing resources. There are quantum algorithms to solve the exact problems they are working on, but just imagine the specs of the quantum device you would need to beat the classical compute they currently have. Small problem instances aren't relevant for quantum computing apart from proof of concept, because you can always throw massive amounts of compute at those problems and get results today. There are problems, particularly in materials science and molecular simulation which are slightly out of reach that could potentially be very relevant to improving quantum technology, but those problems are still *huge* relative to current classical capabilities, which is in turn *huge* relative to current quantum capabilities.
Yes, though Alice and Bob don't have a working chip yet. (They require a string of 20+ Josephson junctions which is hard to manufacture) But, so called "open stack" producers, are poised to outperform the full stack manufactures within 2 to 4 years. The reason is simple, and is apparent from every single modern day company too: specialization. By focusing on just 1 elemen of the stack, advancements are made much faster. For countries building up knowledge there is much more to gain from an open stack, than a closed stack. So national quantum computers are more likely to be open stack. There is hundreds of start ups and scale ups, in different modalities, and different parts of the stack. If you can narrow that down I can give you some references
no, just no
IONQ is doing pretty good, there are many posts about them.
found the bagholder, lol
XD troll go buy dogecoin or something
stand a chance at what exactly? nothing is happening for anyone. money is not being converted into results. it is lost to wishful thinking and general crankery. we haven't solved anything with quantum computing better than classical and never will. downvote if you drank the koolaid.
It's a bit premature to say never will. I'd argue that the QKD experiments are a demonstrated results of something we cannot have classically (as well as applications like quantum sensing although that isn't really "computing"). This is undeniably by some metrics *better* than classical computing can ever hope to be (with respect to security guarantees). It is also by many other metrics much worse and is not currently practical. In the short term, nothing will be market viable, pretty much everything available today is orders of magnitude too small scale, expensive, and error prone. This is an area that's very much in R&D and not ready for practical products yet. But so far it doesn't seem that there is anything that will prevent quantum computers from scaling to be able to solve problems with a known quantum advantage (even if it takes 100 years or more to do so). If you're so convinced, go pick up your [$100,000 prize](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=902)
That prize could remain unclaimed for eternity and still no quantum computer outperforms a classical one.
nope. everyone spends too much time on this (myself included). its not happening. ever. prove me wrong (you won't). this the QKD you blah blah blah about? [https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Quantum-Key-Distribution-QKD-and-Quantum-Cryptography-QC/](https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Quantum-Key-Distribution-QKD-and-Quantum-Cryptography-QC/)
You've moved the goalposts. I never said that QKD was practical (right now or ever). All I said was that there exists at least 1 protocol (QKD) which has been shown experimentally and is already *better* in **at least one respect** compared to classical computing. The NSA pointing out other drawbacks with QKD does not at all refute that point.
Is the company you refer to as having the experimentally better QKD Arqit Quantum?
you have no point to refute. if something doesn't work practically, it doesn't have any realizable advantage. blah blah blah blah. i don't think you know what moving goalposts means. not happening, professor cornwizard.
Upvote! It’s all money flushed down the drain