Inside of a nucleus

Following story had an electric effect on me – it tells of real problems in working with quantum computers, likely to become common-place by 2030, and the basics of what quantum computers can and cannot do, for realistic reasons, not perfect QC capabilities!

Here is my take away.

1.       QC are programmed by comparing answers against tractable normal cases in boundary condition

2.       That match requires deep analysis of noise, artificially added and slowly removed. Unsaid but obvious is that a fixed point algorithm was used. Noise add to some problem can be, while others cannot be removed so.

3.       Generalization of boundary problems is assumed to work. This might be true – say deuterium to tritium etc., but may or may not in heterogeneous systems.

4.       The problem of latency between the users and cloud-based services is severe. Latency and crytion-trust are two fundamental limitations of cloud computing. One can drastically reduce internet latency by in-house QC for example.

5.       Real world programmers will likely not be motivated as these scientists.