Quantum Computing Skeptics – Source: www.schneier.com

Quantum Computing Skeptics

Interesting article. I am also skeptical that we are going to see useful quantum computers anytime soon. Since at least 2019, I have been saying that this is hard. And that we don’t know if it’s “land a person on the surface of the moon” hard, or “land a person on the surface of the sun” hard. They’re both hard, but very different.

Tags: quantum computing

Posted on January 25, 2024 at 7:04 AM •
3 Comments

Erdem Memisyazici •

January 25, 2024 9:19 AM

I expect to see one at one billion dollars range by 2039. NIST hasn’t predicted anything wrong yet.

Clive Robinson •

January 25, 2024 10:08 AM

@ Jeff Hall,

From the head of the article,

“Scientists achieve groundbreaking room-temperature quantum coherence for 100 nanoseconds”

A hundred nanoseconds is about the time it takes for a photon to go “~98ft in a vacuum”

Have a look at how big the “chandeliers” are and how few Qbits they can hold and still be able to use them,

https://www.popsci.com/technology/in-photos-journey-to-the-center-of-a-quantum-computer/

Much of the chandelier is to do with the signal sources used to be able to use the 50 or so Qbits, so even though room tempreture would be nice the volume is not going to go down by much.

So even if you could build them into a cube, remember that even in quantum computing “the round trip time” is what counts, and that’s going to be at best 1/4 of that 98ft across the faces.

So there is actually not much gained and so still a long long way to go.