Quantum Baloney Spat: IBM Dismisses the GOOG over Supremacy
October 23, 2019
I am not holding my breath for quantum computers which do something semi-useful. Science club experiments are interesting but not something welcomed in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky.
Not long ago a Googler announced that the GOOG was king and queen of the quantum hill. “IBM Upends Google’s Quantum Supremacy Claim” suggests that Google’s statement and subsequent removal of the document containing the claim was baloney. Hence, the quantum baloney spat.
The capitalist’s tool states:
Dario Gil, head of IBM quantum research, described the claim of quantum supremacy as indefensible and misleading. In a written statement, he said, “Quantum computers are not ‘supreme’ against classical computers because of a laboratory experiment designed to essentially implement one very specific quantum sampling procedure with no practical applications.”
Why believe IBM, the master of the Watson hot air balloon?
The answer:
Yesterday, IBM published a paper that backed up their claim. The paper points out that Google made an error in estimating that a classical computer would require 10,000 years to solve the problem.
There you go. Two self published papers. Real news.
Forbes included a useful point:
According to IBM’s blog, “an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity.” The blog post went on to say that 2.5 days is a worst-case estimate. Additional research could reduce the time even further. Google’s 10,000-year estimate was overstated because of an erroneous assumption. They believed that RAM requirements for running a quantum simulation of the problem in a classical computer would be prohibitively high. For that reason, Google used the time to offset the lack of space, hence their estimate of 10,000 years.
Cheese with that baloney?
Stephen E Arnold, October 23, 2019
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