On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 3:14 PM Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I think the killer application for a quantum computer will be simulating >> quantum systems. >> > > > Why shouldn't simulations of quantum systems on (massive CPU/GPU > parallel) computers be just as good? > Because regardless of how big your classical computer is if you're running any known classical algorithm on it every time you Increase the number of interacting particles by 1 in a quantum system (N) you increase the number of computations required to simulate it exponentially, but with a quantum computer the increase is only geometrical. Basically it's the difference between 2^N and N^2, one increases MUCH faster than the other. So even a supercomputer, if it's classical, can only simulate very simple quantum systems exactly, very soon you need to make all sorts of simplifying approximations, and not long after that you can't even make approximations that are worth a damn. A classical computer can't even figure out the freezing point of water starting from Schrodinger's Equation because it's just too complicated to calculate, we need to do experiments if we want to know it. And that's a molecule involving only 3 atoms and 10 electrons. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1MiMA%2BnkgWHvkPrfhxUn33omeqiyKJN22FzHPCTGMhAg%40mail.gmail.com.
