Reply to post: In all seriousness...

Google: We've achieved quantum supremacy! IBM: Nope. And stop using that word, please

Michael Wojcik Silver badge

In all seriousness...

... it's a good blog post. The abstruse technical content is relatively minor and can safely be skipped by people not knowledgeable about the field. It makes good points about how data representations, algorithms, implementation optimizations, and resources with a range of economic parameters can be used to solve problems using conventional (non-BQP) techniques in ways that are many orders of magnitude more efficient than the straightforward approach.

Its cautions about "quantum supremacy" are also well-taken, of course. Even if (probably when) we have a true QS machine, the set of useful problems that can be economically solved by such a system is going to be quite small, even in the best case. Real, productive application of BQP algorithms will mostly require a machine quite a lot larger than the minimal QS system. And QC systems do not trivially scale. It's possible that a minimal-QS machine is feasible but a generally-useful QC system is not, even for high-value problems.

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