Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Well the word creeps me out and I wish they would choose another.

It isn’t even the right word to use since the intended meaning is a quantum computer that can do something that a classic computer can’t do at all, not just better at it.

Quantum Possible sounds better to me.



> a quantum computer that can do something that a classic computer can’t do at all, not just better at it.

When speed is an aspect of the requirement, then it's something the other computer can't do.

E.g. 'complete this calculation in n days on hardware x' or 'completed this calculation with time complexity t and memory complexity m'


"It isn’t even the right word to use since the intended meaning is a quantum computer that can do something that a classic computer can’t do at all, not just better at it."

No, that's exactly what it means in Googles research. It means it can do it faster than a classical computer, not that it's impossible for a classical computer to do.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy

First line- "Quantum supremacy is the potential ability of quantum computing devices to solve problems that classical computers practically cannot."

We can argue about what practically means but I read that as a very very long time. No one worries about someone breaking RSA-2048 with a classical computer because it is "practically" impossible.

>In putting together our video, we estimated the age of the Universe to be 13,751,783,021 years or a little over 13.75 billion years*, therefore if you tried to break a DigiCert 2048-bit SSL certificate using a standard modern desktop computer, and you started at the beginning of time, you would have expended 13 billion years of processing by the time you got back to today, and you would still have to repeat that entire process 468,481 times one after the other into our far far distant future before there was a good probability of breaking the certificate. In fact the Universe itself would grow dark before you even got close.

https://www.digicert.com/TimeTravel/math.htm

This may not be the case with Quantum Possible computation.


If given enough time, classical computers can calculate anything that quantum computers can.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: