• kakes@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Wait, seriously? That’s quite a jump from the last one I heard about.

    Also: it’s actually 1,121 qubits, even more impressive.

    • MaggiWuerze@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      Isn’t that also quite the small form factor? I still had the fridge sized copper monstrosities in mind when thinking of quantum computers

      • e0qdk@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        The attached picture says 133 qubits, so whatever that chip is (edit: Heron) it’s not this thing.

        IBM’s post (that the article links) says:

        Breaking the 1,000-qubit barrier with Condor

        We have introduced IBM Condor, a 1,121 superconducting qubit quantum processor based on our cross-resonance gate technology. Condor pushes the limits of scale and yield in chip design with a 50% increase in qubit density, advances in qubit fabrication and laminate size, and includes over a mile of high-density cryogenic flex IO wiring within a single dilution refigerator.

        So, it sounds like this is actually another fridge sized system.

        • rishabh@discuss.tchncs.de
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          11 months ago

          These qubits oscillate at microwave frequencies where the quantum information is stored. This means they need to be kept at a temperature where the microwave frequencies are completely devoid of any thermal noise. For microwave frequencies, this temperature is just a few millikelvins above absolute zero. Unfortunately, the temperature is required due to the fundamental nature of thermal noise due to temperature. Making the qubits out of room temperature superconductor would not solve the problem of the need to cool them down - unless they can be operated at higher frequency. There are quantum computers made using light/optical photons which do operate at room temperature because optical photons are at much higher frequency which has no thermal noise even at room temperature.

          So, in conclusion, everytime you hear about superconducting qubit, they are always in a giant dilution refrigerator which gets bigger for more qubits as more connections from room temperature to qubits are needed.

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        I may be mistaken but the fridge sized copper monstrosity is the system that cool the quantum chip, so unless they miniaturized the cooling system it didn’t change.

      • thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        From what I remember the chip itself is pretty small, the size is all due to the cooling component.

        Also keep in mind you’ve probably seen a development version of a quantum computer, where things are set up to be easily accessible to allow fixing and tinkering, without regard for size and optimization of space.

    • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      It’s faster than Moore’s law, but I don’t know whether it can be sustained.

      For years, IBM has been following a quantum-computing road map that roughly doubled the number of qubits every year. The chip unveiled on 4 December, called Condor, has 1,121 superconducting qubits arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It follows on from its other record-setting, bird-named machines, including a 127-qubit chip in 2021 and a 433-qubit one last year.

  • Corhen@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This really is amazing to see. It feels like just year when we were discussing 1, 2, or 10 qubits.

    Are there any/many current uses for these quantum computers?

        • Rin@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Paywall. Also, passwords and RSA are two different things.

          • ferret@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            Reversing hashing algos is what people mean when they talk about quantum computers cracking passwords / encryption, though.

            • frezik@midwest.social
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              11 months ago

              No, they mean breaking RSA. The industry standard methods of storing passwords are resistant to QC attacks. Passwords could be broken while being passed between client and server under existing algorithms, but not the databases they’re stored in.

    • rishabh@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      For now they are only being used for research purposes. For example, simulating Quantum effects in many atom physics and implementing error correction for future quantum computers. Any real applications still need some time but the pace of development is really quite something.

      • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        Currently, there is basically only one real world application we really know: Factoring numbers into prime factors. And we can’t know for sure whether there will be more even.

    • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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      11 months ago

      Wasn’t there a study that, with the current approach of evaluating an average to break it down to a few finite states, they might never be able to do for what they were developed; cracking passwords?

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        11 months ago

        If by “cracking passwords” you mean reversing password hashes in a database, quantum computers aren’t going to make a big dent there. The standard industry ways of doing that wouldn’t be affected much by QCs. Breaking encryption, OTOH, with QCs is a concern, but also vastly overrated. It would take orders of magnitude more qubits to pull off than what’s been worked on so far, and it may not be feasible to juggle that many qubits in a state of superposition.

        I get really annoyed when people focus on breaking encryption with QCs. They are far more interesting and useful than that.

        QC can make logistics more efficient. Have you ever seen photos of someone unpacking a giant Amazon box holding one little micro SD card? Amazon isn’t dumb about these things, but our best methods of packing an entire truck is a guess. Packing algorithms would take too long to calculate how to perfectly pack it, so they come up with a solution that seems OK, and that leads to a few “filler” boxes that are unnecessarily large, among other inefficiencies. QC can solve this problem without taking the age of the universe to come up with a solution.

        The order in which that truck delivers those packages can also be made more efficient with QC.

        Then there’s molecular simulations, which have the promise of making medications that are more effective, more likely to pass trials, and with fewer side effects. This can be done far faster on a QC.

      • Corhen@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I dont think that the only use of Quantum computers is password cracking, rather that one of the types of work loads thats much easier on a quantum computer.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Man, if something like this could make crypto obsolete, I would laugh like a mf.

        • hansl@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          There’d just be new cryptocurrencies. There are crypto algorithms that are already quantum resistant. Monero is a great example.

          You seem to be under the impression that crypto somewhat relies on current technology to exist. It’s a set of heuristics and algorithms, not a single implementation. And those can evolve for new use cases or technologies.

          What you said is akin to “if something like this could make databases obsolete”.

        • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Not how it works as far as I know. If people start mining with a quantum computers the difficulty will increase making it even more secure (one of bitcoins main features). Traditional computers will drop out due to lack of rewards and more powerful quantum computers will enter and compete with the original quantum computers and the cycle continues. It’s a self balancing system.

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            11 months ago

            QC would be completely devastating to bitcoin. Anyone with a sufficient QC could break any block of the bitcoin chain they want, essentially giving all the bitcoins to themselves. There are other cryptocurrencies that are quantum-resistant, but bitcoin itself would be done.

            • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              I would assume in the face of that the bitcoin network would have to change its consensus to include quantum resistance. I think this is possible but not sure

          • Nighed@sffa.community
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            11 months ago

            But you have control of the network with a majority of mining right? So it’s very possible that one or more organisations could control it for long enough that it’s not trusted?

            And how does proof of stake work cryptography?

            • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              I’m not really a great source for this stuff but I would assume that the quantum computer would have to be more powerful than all of the other mining compute combined for that to happen. Then it would have to be so far ahead that no new quantum computers were coming online to compete against it.

              The other part is incentive. If you want to take over 50% of the network the incentive wouldn’t be to double spend because once it’s detected the price collapses due to lack of trust, bitcoins fundamentals change and it’s no longer decentralised effectively making it another centralised shitcoin. There could be incentive for a government to do this or a rival currency but bitcoin is fundamental to all crypto currencies so they would be damaging themselves greatly in the process.

              I can’t answer your proof of stake question with any confidence

    • echo64@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It takes about a billion qbits to break 2048bit encryption, so a while. I saw something about reducing it to about 20 million qbits recently, but it’s still a while off.

      • Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        More importantly, how long until I can guarantee a 51% chance of solving every bitcoin block?

        • cyd@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Hash functions are not known to be quantum vulnerable (i.e., there’s no known quantum algorithm that provides an exponential speedup, best you can do is to use Grover’s algorithm to slightly speed up the brute force search). So maybe never.

            • hansl@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              They’re one way functions. Encryption requires decryption, so you cannot lose information.

              Hash functions are meant to lose information. They cannot be reversed. What they’re good at is verification; do you have the right password? Do you have a proof that this is your message and not someone else’s?

              We already use hash functions where they make sense, but the parent is not entirely right; not all hashes and signatures are equals. Some are very quantum susceptible. Those will likely be broken real soon (think years, not decades). Some are quantum resistant.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        11 months ago

        IIRC, those several million qubit computers out there right now aren’t really comparable, either. They’re using a ton of qubits, expecting a lot of them to fall out of superposition, but hoping they have enough to get a useful result. IBM’s approach is to try to get the most out of every qubit. Either approach is valid, but IBM’s 1000 qubits can’t be directly compared to millions of qubits used elsewhere.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      It’s worth noting that the laser was much the same way. It was described early on as a solution in search of a problem, and lasers have had an incredible impact on technology.

      • 4am@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        They’re not for running games faster, but they could potentially find two large prime factors pretty fast.

        • A_A@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          … potentially …

          Useless today, unknown tomorrow.

          • sethboy66@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            I have personally written code for quantum computers to save time due to algorithmic complexity; I was a college student at the time.

            So if their usefulness is stuck in the unknowable future then I’m a time traveler.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Great, so when operating systems have finally reached relative stability, the future holds crashes coming from the chipset.

  • xia@lemmy.sdf.org
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    11 months ago

    1000? Wasn’t that the threshold for breaking RSA crypto, or something?

    • I think it’s closer to 20,000,000 and that is out the Noise Intermediate Scale Quantum computing, meaning modern chips would need to double or quadruple the number of qubits for error detection and error correction in order to run even basic algorithms. That’s not to mention that they’d need to be super cooled for up to eight hours and stay in a super position without decoherence into their ground states before performing the Shor’s Algorithm.

      TL;DR: We need an improvement over 20000x and better tech to break RSA, but this is a good step forward!

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm

      • WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        So, basically, we’re still in the ENIAC stage of quantum computers. They’re cool and all, can do some awesome stuff, but are no where near the potential they could be.

    • Turun@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      There is a difference between logical and physical qbits. Several physical qbits need to be combined to yield one logical qbit.

    • It’s actually impossible to do a direct comparison of flops to what I guess we’d call quflops, as the algorithms are not directly comparable. Quantum computers are good at quantum algorithms that can do operations in a single time step that a classical computer couldn’t, likewise, to simulate a classical computer on a quantum computer would be very resource intensive.