Re:Classical Cryptography Will Survive Quantum Computers
by Robotbeat on Friday December 29, 2017 @01:36PM
(#16031023)
D-Wave's computer is fundamentally different than other quantum computers. The D-Wave is a quantum annealling computer. And for a while, there was some question whether what it was doing could actually be described fully classically, though now I think the consensus is that there is some quantum effect. Although classical or quantum, there could still be a practical speed up over the typical conventional computers. The idea is to use them for optimization problems. But they aren't a straightforward mapping to the usual quantum computer, and so cannot be directly compared.
To me, it's like comparing an analogue and a digital computer.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-42426121/quantum-compu...
The recent UNSW silicon architecture announcement included something similar to that (480 qubit chip module that scales). Plus, they said they have an error-correction algorithm that will scale to millions of qubits.
https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/complete-desi...
Google has also suggested that they just need to get the stability of the first qubits right and then scaling them will be easier:
https://www.wired.com/2014/09/martinis/
In that post Martinis actually hoped they'd double the number of qubits every year, but I think it's been closer to 1.5-2 years, for both Google and IBM. Google plans to announce the rumored 49 qubits quantum computer next March.
D-Wave was able to double the number of qubits every year in their first four years, and now it seems to double every 2 years. I think D-Wave's capabilities have only improved significantly, rather than regressed with the number of qubits. We don't know yet if that's true for Google and IBM, but I would imagine it is.