Microsoft, International Business Machines, Google and a host of other tech companies are in a race to disrupt the nature of computing.No, none of this is going to happen in five years.Collectively in the U.S., these companies have spent hundreds of millions in the past few years to develop a new type of computer—known as a quantum computer—that leverages the principles of quantum physics to solve problems far beyond the capabilities of today’s best supercomputers.
And the companies say they could do it in the next two to five years.
When this point is reached, some problems that would take a traditional computer more than trillions of years to solve could take a quantum computer mere minutes, changing business as usual for industries involved with financial trading, shipping logistics, pharmaceuticals, scientific discovery, data encryption, insurance, internet delivery and more.
It gives the usual explanation, even though Dr. Quantum Supremacy hates it:
A quantum computer, however — because of entangled qubits’ ability to calculate many probabilities at once — can evaluate all options simultaneously.He says this is misleading, because if that were true, then the quantum computer could solve NP complete problems like the traveling salesman problem.
The article is paywalled. It has some nice graphics, if you can get it.
And yet...
ReplyDeleteeven the precious Wall Street Journal can not produce a single thing
quantum computers have done (besides fund the people building them) that has made money. All this hoopla about a product that has YET to find an actual problem to solve. You can say it slices, dices, walks the dog, and cleans the garage, but can it actually do that?
When you press an expert to tell you how quantum computers will be profitable, they scrunch of their faces and say 'Well...it could..." But it hasn't. With all the present day quantum computers in existence...not one of them has been profitable for actually doing something besides just sitting there looking technologically superior on the front of science and investment magazines. A quantum computer is just basically an over priced fashion model, fun to look at, but it doesn't actually do anything.