Re:IBM Q System One
by mepian on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @01:31PM
(#18858036)
Does it have enough error-corrected qubits to actually do something useful, or is it a high-tech piece of luxury furniture?
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The latter.
More seriously though, there won't be a true error corrected quantum computer for a long time. People are hoping that there can be useful applications with imperfect physical qubits.
At the very least the machines are being used to experimentally verify quantum correction algorithms. See, e.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02297 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01866 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.00990.pdf
[dead]
Maybe a better question to ask is whether the IBM Q System One can do anything faster/better/cheaper than existing classical computers?
After all, the Colossus was able to aid in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, where existing techniques would have been impractical.