this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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463
IBM releases first-ever 1,000-qubit quantum chip (www.nature.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

1000? Wasn't that the threshold for breaking RSA crypto, or something?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think it's closer to 20,000,000 and that is out the Noise Intermediate Scale Quantum computing, meaning modern chips would need to double or quadruple the number of qubits for error detection and error correction in order to run even basic algorithms. That's not to mention that they'd need to be super cooled for up to eight hours and stay in a super position without decoherence into their ground states before performing the Shor's Algorithm.

TL;DR: We need an improvement over 20000x and better tech to break RSA, but this is a good step forward!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So, basically, we're still in the ENIAC stage of quantum computers. They're cool and all, can do some awesome stuff, but are no where near the potential they could be.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I think that's a fair comparison exactly! We're using physical Josephson junctions, almost to quantum computers as vacuum tubes to a classical computer, and we've not made a transistor yet. Some companies claim they have, like D-Wave, but have failed to prove anything quantum mechanical about those "solid-state" qubits.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

There is a difference between logical and physical qbits. Several physical qbits need to be combined to yield one logical qbit.