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Hostilis_ t1_j9movqy wrote

With every one of these announcements, I'm more and more convinced we are really far away from a practical quantum computer. It feels like fusion in the 1970's.

If you're not convinced, all you have to do is ask what's the largest number that's been factored using Shor's algorithm. The answer is the same as it was in 2012: 21. Not quite the exponential progress we saw with transistors.

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Feathercrown t1_j9myefw wrote

I'm not so sure; this could change that. As I understand it, error correction is the most major hurdle to scaling quantum stuff.

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Hostilis_ t1_j9n0wlf wrote

To be honest, it's these results which makes me uninspired. In going from 17 physical qubits to 49, they were able to reduce the error rate from... 3.0 to 2.9 percent. Even though this is a big milestone for the field, in absolute terms it's abysmal.

This is also only with a tiny number of logical qubits. Scaling these systems to usable sizes will take decades.

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TastyFennel540 t1_j9nj567 wrote

It will take decades, Google even alludes to that on their site, but to be honest, the insane power of quantum computers is worth it.

I don't think it will be like fusion in the sense, that most experts understand this task is complex and know how long this will take unlike fusion. Mostly No one thinks quantum computing will happen in the next 7 years.

There will be more computing advances in the near future to look forward too.

Maybe then we'll have a tech points cheat code for our civilization

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Harbinger2001 t1_j9n9epa wrote

At some point the realization will dawn that it’s not going to be the breakthrough technology and funding will dry up. A few researchers will continue to putter on with a much reduced budget at a much slower pace. And nothing will still come of it until a fundamentally different engineering approach is found.

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CoronaryAssistance t1_j9nrdz9 wrote

This is the part on a civ game where if you’ve misallocated resources in your development up till then you end up waiting 50 turns for your next tech

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wanfuse1234 t1_j9ntswj wrote

Tech development starts as a nearly linear progression till it reaches an asymptotic phase where it quickly goes nearly exponential and then levels off and the curve inverts, we are about to reach the asymptotic phase in this tech, and with it n^2 problems will become solvable which is a whole new class of problems that can be solved, both good and bad, including AGI. We will reach the singularity likely within 10 years. Maybe 20.

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riceandcashews t1_j9pwogb wrote

Oh definitely - QC is basically a dream for now. The real computing advancements in the next decade will come from Graphene

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