Technology

Sure, papers about an abacus and a dog are funny and can make you look smart and contrarian on forums. But that’s not the job, and those arguments betray a lack of expertise. As Scott Aaronson said:

Once you understand quantum fault-tolerance, asking “so when are you going to factor 35 with Shor’s algorithm?” becomes sort of like asking the Manhattan Project physicists in 1943, “so when are you going to produce at least a small nuclear explosion?”

L. O. L.

I love that this dude just casually dismissed that QC hasn't been able to factor anything larger that 21 in the last 14 years without cheating and using primes that are nothing close to real world grade primes used in crypto.

Sigh... That timeline adjustment didn't go in the direction I was hoping.

I guess it was inevitable, the science showed that these quantum effects are real, so it was just a matter of time before these machines really work.

Time to rethink and replace everything.

In other words; who knows when its coming but its a good idea to be prepared.

So, maybe soon, but we don't know.

I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know what all the physics in those papers means. That’s not my job and not my expertise.

Well maybe not the right dude to ask then?

My 2 cents: we'll never get to any sort of practical quantum computer size. As size increases, decoherence becomes a bigger problem. This is currently fixed by having more qubits to compensate. But as the size grows, the amount of qubits needed just to compensate for decoherence grows faster. So there's a practical limit on how large of a machine is possible. And it isn't like a smaller machine is just slower, it actually simply can't do any of the cryptography breaking stuff.

From my understanding decoherence is a fundamental part of reality, which can't be helped. But who knows, there might be some breakthrough that allows for it to work. It might also be impossible given the laws of nature. And what I gather it's also impossible to prove it can't be done.

So that's why quantum computers have been in this limbo state for years now. They might be just around the corner or they might never exist.

In the security world people are worried stuff is stored today, for it to be decrypted in 20 years time. So there is a push to think about this and take precautions. This seems smart, not because they think quantum computers will exist, but just as a precaution in case it turns out they do.