The Gaming Den

I guess this could have gone in MSPIS, but I feel that it relates to video gaming more than general news.

So, Intel is going to be releasing 17-Qubit quantum chips (soonish?). Honestly, I thought this was still a while off. I haven't finished reading the article (so maybe these are still worthless w/out the rest of the computing hardware being able to interface w/ it), but it feels like a turning point between Academic qubit computers and commercial/residential qubit computers.

https://futurism.com/17-qubit-chips-beg ... evolution/

psh . .
buzzwords is all.
Todays tech, especially gaming related, doesn't even properly utilize the available power.
And the overabundand available power leads to people not caring about proper programming anymore.
Because the power is there, might as well (ab)use/waste it to do something that games could do years ago with half the power.

So i expect it to take a long long time before all that oh so nifty sounding tech actually has a use due to software making use of it being available.

That starts with firmware, goes to bios/uefi, then to the drivers and then the operating system and THEN the end user software . . .

Programming for quantum computer is very different from programming for standard computers. Maybe very far in the future quantum computing will be good for gaming, but right now quantum computing is for optimization problems (it's been a while, but I wrote an article on them and spoke with the folks who made the D-wave) and isn't even particularly useful for those at the moment.

Does it help anything with the traveling salesman problem?

Stahlseele wrote:Does it help anything with the traveling salesman problem?

Something about how a quantum bit can be in three states vs two (because of it being in a superposition of both off and off, which counts as a quasi third state or something) makes it really good for traveling salesman and other optimization problems that involve a fuckton of potential solutions. This was all ~6 years ago though, when the D-wave, the first commercially available quantum computer, came out. Wouldn't be shocked if more information came out finding new, better uses for them.

One of the other uses would be networking because of quantum entanglement or some shit. I am (was?) a journalist though, I'm just repeating stuff I learned through talking from people who actually understood that shit.

I think i remember reading up a bit on quantum entanglement back when it was the big deal . . it is basically microscopic level teleportation of information due to shared state of being between two things?

Not teleportation (your transmission qubit remains in the same place) but it's essentially instant communication if you have two qubits that are entangled, no matter the distance. It's super secure and setting the entanglement is done at the speed of light I think. With lasers. I have literally no idea how or why it works.

But quantum computing is so far away from ever being used in consumer applications that it's not really worth talking about. I certainly can't afford one, let alone the storage requirements (they need to be kept as close to absolute 0 as possible to reduce decoherence). It is great for optimization problems and will fuck over classic security very hard, and eventually quantum computers could allow for insanely secure communication that can't be intercepted.

It is entirely possible that quantum computers will never be a consumer product because of the storage requirements.

What it will do is fuck with the entire millisecond brokering on the big stock exchanges on the opposite ends of the world.
And those lot are the ones that can actually afford the storage requirements.

Stahlseele wrote:What it will do is fuck with the entire millisecond brokering on the big stock exchanges on the opposite ends of the world.
And those lot are the ones that can actually afford the storage requirements.

Communications are still pretty far away because of decoherence (which is why quantum programs right now are run multiple times to make sure they come out correct) iirc.

Realistically quantum computing's first uses will be (and already are) optimization problems and other problems that can be solved with parallel processing. It will invalidate a lot of modern security due to how well it can do shit like prime factorization and will revolutionize mapping and travel for organizations that can afford it.

Everything else is still up in the air, but communication is a safe bet eventually.

This may be relevant/helpful (or possibly not, since I don't know quantum, so I can't tell how close SMBC is)

^ The author of SMBC collaborated with Scott Aaronson to produce that comic. Aaronson is a quantum computing researcher who has taught at MIT and is now "the founding director of UT Austin's new quantum computing center" (wiki), and I would be hard-pressed to name a significantly more authoritative source.

Fwib wrote:This may be relevant/helpful (or possibly not, since I don't know quantum, so I can't tell how close SMBC is)

I have never thought I'd see SMBC become an educational cartoon. I feel dirty now.