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by pmarreck 71 days ago
Can quantum computing do even basic math yet? I think this was the holdup. Or perhaps I'm missing the point.
4 comments

This is a good question, and currently the answer is no. Quantum computers can only run very short, simple algorithms right now, because the qubits they're built out of are noisy. You need a lot of error correction, which the community is working on.

The thing is, unlike ordinary computers, quantum computers can factor numbers about as easily as they can multiply them. So as soon as they can multiply two large integers, they'll also be able to factor the result and break RSA encryption based on keys of that size.

This blog post gives a good sense of the state of the art and what progress might look like:

Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet? https://algassert.com/post/2500

And isn't the response already known in the validation process?
I don't understand your question. Can you elaborate?
Replication of quantum factorisation records with a 8bits home computer, Abacus and a dog
What are you trying to say here? This makes no sense.
That's a famous paper that debunk a lot of things related to marketing announcements. Basically nothing has truly factorized 15, let alone 21.
I think "basic math" here means arithmetic or similar. Solutions exists, but current machines are noisy:

V. Vedral, A. Barenco, and A. Ekert, Quantum net- works for elementary arithmetic operations, Physi- cal Review A 54, 147 (1996).

> I think this was the holdup

It isn't...

It doesn't do basic math ... just the hard one :)