Can One Machine Do It All?
Showing only ideas leading to #5911.
See chronicle·See most recent related ideasA quantum computer could factor numbers hundreds of digits long in hours, by finding how often the remainders of a number’s powers repeat. That would break the codes that protect most of the internet’s secrets, which rely on factoring being too hard.
A quantum computer could never run long enough. Its quantities vary continuously, like those of an old analog computer, so small errors pile up and can’t be corrected the way a classical computer corrects a slipped bit: you can’t even look at a quantum state to check it without disturbing it.
Quantum errors can be corrected faster than they arise, as long as each step errs less often than a certain threshold. Nest codes inside codes, and a quantum computation can run as long as needed, as accurately as wanted.
The threshold theorem assumes errors strike independently, but in real devices they don’t: noise is correlated with the very states being computed. So no quantum device will get far enough below the threshold for error correction to work.
On our Willow chip, logical qubits spread over squares of 3 by 3, 5 by 5, and 7 by 7 qubits failed less often the bigger they were: each step up in size cut the failures by more than half. The errors are far enough below the threshold for error correction to work, and the biggest logical qubit outlived the best physical qubit in it.
My general conclusion applies to these claims too: Google Quantum AI’s claims, published ones included, should be approached with caution, particularly extraordinary ones. Its 2019 claim of quantum supremacy overestimated the classical running time by ten orders of magnitude, and its fidelities matched its predictions too well to be plausible. Such claims may stem from significant methodological errors, and reflect the researchers’ expectations more than objective scientific reality.
Most of Kalai’s post re-analyzes Google’s 2019 experiment, which was long ago superseded anyway. Since then, several other experiments, some by other groups, such as USTC’s and Quantinuum’s, challenge his position, so it no longer rests on Google’s claims alone.