http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Mike Archbold <[email protected]> wrote: > OK, I guess I have a misconceptions afoot. I thought the intention > was that you could read out eg. ALL states in a qubit register, not > just a single state of many possible. And I know also that whatever > you do get is probabalistic. That explains the claim that was made in > the paper I was reading above. (Having spent a long time as a bank > programmer too, I can tell you that they aren't going to like the idea > of "probability" when it comes to balances. Nobody wants to have > about $100...) I wonder too if these problems cannot someday be > overcome. The gentleman above is writing sci-fi.... > > Mike > > On 3/20/13, Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Mike Archbold <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Thanks. In a kind of pure form quantum computation seems kind of >>> problematic now, but it seems like it could be hybridized in the not >>> to distant future. Example: suppose you wanted to capture all the >>> properties for some object in 8 bit registers, one register to >>> describe each property of the object. Instead of being limited to a >>> single property per register, now you can cram 2^8 -- 256 --properties >>> in a single register. A simply program could be crammed in another >>> register, so you could run the whole shebang out of just two >>> registers. The only time I tried parallel programming was on a Tandem >>> computer, and I never developed the hang of it really. Simpler just >>> to think serially. So some means of converting a program to parallel >>> from serial would be nice. doubtless people have tried that. Mike A >> >> I suspect that you are thinking in terms of conventional computing. >> Are all of your operations time reversible? Most familiar operations >> like assignment, arithmetic, and array indexing, are not. You have to >> think in terms of rotations in complex vector space. Also, you can >> store a superposition of values in a qubit register, but then you can >> only read one of them out, and you won't know which one. >> >> Besides Shor's algorithm and Grover's algorithm, one application could >> be computational chemistry. Currently, there is no program that can >> input a chemical equation like CH4 + O2 and tell you what the reaction >> products will be and how much energy will be released. In theory, you >> could calculate it by modeling the motions of the atomic nuclei and >> electrons. But that requires solving the Schrodinger equation, which >> for n particles requires O(2^n) operations on a conventional computer. >> However, nature "computes" chemical reactions with O(n) operations in >> parallel in O(1) time. In theory, so could a quantum computer, if we >> knew how to build one. >> >> >> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> AGI >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/11943661-d9279dae >> Modify Your Subscription: >> https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com >> > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/3701026-786a0853 > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
