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by enkid 2428 days ago
That's not quantum supremacy. It's about doing something on a quantum computer that would be infeasible on a standard computer. This is because in some scenarios a single calculation by a quantum computer could be equivalent to a vast number (many trillions) of calculations made by a standard computer.
1 comments
reportgunner 2428 days ago
> more operations per second than any binary computer can do

> doing something on a quantum computer that would be infeasible on a standard computer

Sorry, but I fail to see how these two are different.

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lippel82 2428 days ago
They use different "algorithms", so solving a problem can be done in very different ways for a quantum and a classical computer. Comparing the number of operations per second does not make sense because the advantage of quantum algorithms lies in the fact, that they can achieve the same results with (exponentially) fewer operations.
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reportgunner 2428 days ago
We can keep moving the goalposts and I can rephrase my claim to:

> it's a state when a quantum computer can achieve results that would require more operations on a binary computer than a binary computer has proven to be able to do

but the point will still stand.

We can't say we achieved quantum supremacy for this one thing because binary computers still have supremacy over everyting else.

I guess we can agree here that quantum supremacy was definitely not achieved since we are not clear on the definition of said quantum supremacy.

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enkid 2427 days ago
No, quantum supremacy is about quantum computers being better at one thing. Then there will be a reason to use them. It's like making a screwdriver when you already have a hammer. Sometime a hammer and nails is better and sometimes a screwdriver and screws is better. It's about picking the right tools for the job.
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hgoel 2426 days ago
It isn't about them being better in the sense of faster than a classical computer, but rather scaling. Quantum computing is attractive because we expect that some operations scale much better with size on one compared to classical computing. ie if for a task the quantum algorithm is O(n) while the classical version is O(n!)
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