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Gekokapowco t1_j1ngg4m wrote

Reply to comment by nagareteku in An IBM Quantum Computer Will Soon Pass the 1,000-Qubit Mark by giuliomagnifico

Is it like a really fast CPU? Exceedingly fast at doing a single, potentially complex task? Vs a GPU which can do a lot of simple tasks at once?

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km89 t1_j1ohf92 wrote

Sort of, but not really.

It could be faster than classical computers at a specific task, yes.

But it's not just churning through the same steps a classical computer would, faster than a classical computer would. It's something entirely different, which is why the biggest benefit is likely going to be the simulation of systems we can't currently simulate.

So it's not like a really fast CPU, the way a car is a faster vehicle than a horse. It's more like a petting zoo versus a conservation zoo. Some of the same things are present in both, but they really have almost entirely different purposes.

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