Comment of the Day: Phil Koop https://www.bradford-delong...

Comment of the Day: Phil Koop https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/09/quantum-supremacy.html#tpe-action-resize-355 on Quantum Supremacy in reply to Kaleberg: "Your objection is mistaken, as Scott Aaronson explains:

Q12. Even so, there are countless examples of materials and chemical reactions that are hard to classically simulate, as well as special-purpose quantum simulators (like those of Lukin���s group at Harvard). Why don���t these already count as quantum computational supremacy?

Under some people���s definitions of ���quantum computational supremacy,��� they do! The key difference with Google���s effort is that they have a fully programmable device���one that you can program with an arbitrary sequence of nearest-neighbor 2-qubit gates, just by sending the appropriate signals from your classical computer. In other words, it���s no longer open to the QC skeptics to sneer that, sure, there are quantum systems that are hard to simulate classically, but that���s just because nature is hard to simulate, and you don���t get to arbitrarily redefine whatever random chemical you find in the wild to be a ���computer for simulating itself.��� Under any sane definition, the superconducting devices that Google, IBM, and others are now building are indeed ���computers.���...

#commentoftheday #2019-10-13