106
Supercomputer makes calculations in blink of an eye that take rivals 47 years
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I'm not so familiar with quantum computers. Can you describe how they accomplish different tasks?
My understanding was that the key difference was bits versus qubits, basically translating to individual operations calculating more data. So a bit is x^2, but a qubit is x^8 if i remember correctly. Under the hood, it's all still math, but with a different base number system. Everything would have to be rebuilt at the lowest layer, but abstractions over bitwise operations should remain the same, I thought. Maybe my base understanding of quantum computers is wrong? I'm curious
Not an expert by any means but I did study a related field some years ago. As I understand it, traditional computers are good at solving problems that can be represented by deterministic finite automata. Quantum computers, on the other hand, can solve problems that are more readily represented by nondeterministic finite automata.
Basically, traditional computers are one (complex) machine that can do a single thing at a time (very quickly). Quantum computers, with their qubits, are like dozens of machines all computing simultaneously and solving all possible inputs and outcomes at once.
Take this with a grain of salt because I’ve been told by people much smarter than me that my understanding is flawed in a way I couldn’t quite grasp.
Here’s some more info: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-dfa-and-nfa/
That article definitely assumes knowledge that I don't have haha
But bring non-deterministic doesn't seem super useful to me. A lot of computing is only useful if the results are reliable. Maybe this is what the original commenter meant?
But thanks for sharing
As said it's about superpositions. Normal bits can be set to 0 or 1. Qbits can be in a superpositions of states 0 and 1. So the state of a qbits can be written as a weighted sum of the two states. Now you can do traditional math with this, always could. It's just a physical level difference of the system. There are many bullshit things with quantum computing tho. They are probabilistic in nature and have infinite memory.of the past, for example.
I think the trouble is you can assume your superposition calculated all the possibilities, but you have no way of picking the right one. it just calculated all the possibilities at the same time. however, there are some really clever ways that i don't fully understand of figuring out what the result is, if the result is periodic you can see some kind of interference, or if it can be represented as a lowest energy state the system can fall into - honestly it's all really confusing. but it has to be a specific algorithm that's been identified for a quantum computer, if you try to run it like a regular computer it won't work at all. here's a cool article on the algorithms: https://www.amarchenkova.com/posts/5-quantum-algorithms-that-could-change-the-world
i think shor's algorithm is the most interesting because it breaks encryption and ends the world
That is a great article. I only got through maybe two thirds of it, but I'll go through the rest when i have better focus.
So... it sounds like practical use will be something like a QPU, quantum processing unit. When you need highly parallelized, probability-based, shallow computation, it would be good to use a QPU. Data preparation or more step-wise operations would go to a traditional CPU/GPU. I can see how this would be useful.
yeah! if something can be expressed in an algorithm that can be implemented using qbits, it can run there. 99% of computing will be done on your regular cpu, but for certain problems a regular cpu would take years to solve, you can run it through the multiverse for a quick answer.