Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by josalhor 974 days ago
What are the constant factors here? Could this be dropped in everywhere they are already using Shor's algorithm and just get a speed up? If so, this results seems incredibly influential.
1 comments

No one is "already using Shor's algorithm". Wikipedia lists the largest numbers factored using Shor's algorithm on a real quantum computer as follows:

- The number 15 (5*3) was factored in 2001

- The number 21 (7*3) was factored in 2012

- An attempt to factor 35 (5*7) was made in 2019 but they didn't succeed because of accumulation of errors in the quantum computer.

Quantum computers today are very bad, so changing the algorithm probably won't change much.

There is an argument out there that the 15 and 21 factorizations involved built in knowledge of the answer. If you accept that then there has been zero progress demonstrated so far for factoring numbers using quantum effects, not just a ridiculously small amount of progress.
On the positive side, they haven't factored 17 and 19.
Is this a joke? Or...
So, less than one bit of progress per decade? That's not exactly huge progress...
At this rate, just 2510*1.5 years and we will crack all current AES. Hopefully we will be using 512 bit keys by then. 512 bits should be enough for anyone.
Shoes does not attack symmetric ciphers like AES.

Grover’s algorithm applies and will never be used against even AES 128.