The quantum technology ecosystem explained

https://steveblank.com/2022/03/22/the-quantum-technology-ecosystem-explained/

by sblank • 4 years ago

70 32 4 years ago

steveblank.com

westurner5• 4 years ago

Wikipedia (dbpedia, wikidata,) concept URIs:

Category:Quantum mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Quantum_mechanics

Applications_of_quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_quantum_mechan...

List of emerging technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies may have inspiration for applications of currently-discovered quantum mechanical phenomena.

#Q12 is the Quantum K12 talent.

QoS: Quantum-on-Silicon may very well scale; but how can we store un-collapsed output qubits?

Quantum tagging,

zardo• 4 years ago

QoS: Quantum-on-Silicon may very well scale; but how can we store un-collapsed output qubits?

Aren't all current programmable quantum processors essentially made of qubit memory cells capable of certain in-memory operations?

NohatCoder3• 4 years ago

All current programmable quantum processors are made from unicorn hairs and fairy dust.

The current state of the art is trying to prove that the thing did something quantum. Programmability is at best swapping some wires around to change that something.

_sword• 4 years ago

All of the QC companies have “gone public” via SPAC mergers. Less oversight, more hockey stick revenue projections.

ziofill• 4 years ago

not all of them

latenightcoding• 4 years ago

all of them. IonQ, Rigetti, D-Wave.

reikonomusha7• 4 years ago

HRL Laboratories is very active in the field (if you happened to catch them at APS March Meeting) and hasn't been public since their founding in the 60s. It's one of the most respected private research laboratories of the United States. (It's currently jointly owned by Boeing and General Motors, but enjoys decision-making autonomy.)

kvathupo• 4 years ago

Frankly, they had no other choice: public funding for quantum computing research is unacceptably low in the US. While China is funneling $10B into a single quantum lab [1], the US only spent $800M in the whole area for 2021 [2].

I fear that we're repeating the same mistake we made with Machine Learning funding. A decade ago, the US was quite clearly ahead of China in machine learning, but they're comparable now. In quantum information science, the US is currently ahead of China in terms of research. But will it remain that way?

For more information, here's a panel discussion on the quantum computing race between China and the US (I was quite frustrated by it):

https://youtu.be/KzFEeQ49HHI

[1] https://english.ckgsb.edu.cn/knowledges/quantum-wars/

[2] https://quantumcomputingreport.com/u-s-qis-budget-proposed-t...

NohatCoder3• 4 years ago

The article mention that NSA have objected to quantum key distribution, then go on to state: However, if you’re a commercial company these systems may be worth exploring. The problem that NSA and many others have pointed out is that it doesn't solve any actual problems. It creates a bunch of hassles but can't replace asymmetric cryptography.

grobclaw• 4 years ago

Correctly implemented QKD gives you key distribution without assumptions about how difficult certain mathematical problems are in relation to how much compute your adversary has. Key distribution is nowadays done with assymetric cryptography, so QKD can replace some assymmetric cryptography. You can also have authentication (Wegman-Carter) with symmetric keys. What's not quite clear is how you would do certificates and PKI. However, given key distribution, you could probably use symmetric keys for that as well.

It's unlikely that your adversaries can decrypt your traffic right now (break things like RSA). However, advances in number theory and/or computing power might enable them to do that in the future. Your adversary can just record your encrypted traffic and wait until the means to decrypt it become available. Thus, for data that has to stay secure for a long time (and where you want to be as sure as possible that it will) it's not good to rely on predictions into the future about advances in number theory or computing. This is the niche that QKD is aiming at.

For what it's worth, China has a huge QKD network, which cost them a lot of money. Their QKD satellite also cost a lot of money. They are in fact world leaders in quantum communication technology as well and spend a lot on researching it. I wonder why they made this investment, whether it was smart, and what they get out of it.

I also have doubts that QKD will see much use in the coming decades and even more doubts that its use will be done properly and actually make a lot of systems more secure. Securing systems is very hard and securing individual communication links (what QKD does) is not the main problem. In the current landscape, securing your data and communications to a reasonable level just isn't worth it for the vast majority of buisnesses, since they can offload most of the damages of being breached to their customers. There is a danger that QKD will be seen as "magic fairy dust" that you sprinkle over your systems just to claim you're trying very hard to secure them (this image is still widespread about standard cryptography as well).

beloch• 4 years ago

To put it briefly,

Messages sent using classical crypto should be viewed as being public after an unknown delay. They can be decoded at your adversary's leisure with techniques and equipment invented in the future.

Quantum cyrpto must be broken immediately to be broken at all.

If what you are encrypting is, for example, credit card information, it's perfectly fine if that becomes public in a decade. Your information will have changed.

If what you are encrypting needs to remain secret for the next fifty years, do not use classical encyrption and a public channel. It may well be made public while the information is still sensitive. This is why QKD has some early adopters. It's the only long-term secure alternative to having people carry one time pad's back and forth in suitcases full of hard drives, which has its own security issues.

bashmelek• 4 years ago

For anyone interested, IBM quantum experience lets you simulate quantum computer operation, and even gives an allowance of running actual simple programs, made in their visual tool “composer”, on a real quantum device, through the api. Signup required for some things. https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/composer/files/new

mikewave• 4 years ago

You can also sign up for D-Wave Leap and use our online IDE, problem visualizer, and submit problems to our QPUs with a free signup. https://cloud.dwavesys.com/leap/

plaguepilled• 4 years ago

This is somewhat frustrating. I think everyone is interested in alternatives to IBM's offering, but putting it behind account sign-up makes it hostile to 'just checking it out'. I believe this is also why IBM allow some of their features to be accessed without an account.

Please remove the account requirement if possible. I will happily check it out once the account requirement is removed.

kaicode2• 4 years ago

Quantum imaging was an application I was not aware of until reading this. Tremendously exciting. Great post.

The quantum technology ecosystem explained

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