why our phones,pcs,laptops,consoles etc aren’t quantum?
A lot of people have already mentioned that they are too large and expensive for consumer devices. They also need to be cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (using liquid helium) for the superconductors, which adds additional bulk and power draw.
These quantum computers would also require a different architecture that isn’t supported by the majority of software and OSs, since they work very differently to standard non-quantum chips. Think how RISC-V isn’t very well supported too well right now, and it’s much worse than that since the logic gates needed for computation, storage, etc. need to be rewritten entirely due to the use of qubits over bits! Aside for some very specific research bits, there is nearly nothing that can currently run on a quantum computer.
As of right now, even the largest quantum computers only has a few hundreds, maybe a few thousand, qubits, which isn’t enough processing power for running a regular desktop OS and consumer applications, even if everything was magically ported to quantum land. Not only that, major hurdle right now is reducing environmental interference from affecting the qubits, meaning there are currently high error rates, i.e. the qubits do not behave.
You wouldn’t want a quantum computer for everyday computing. They’re good at performing very specific types of calculations for research, not running applications.
Although someone will eventually get Doom running on one, I’d imagine.
Those calculations have been rather academic, usually benchmarks.
Because they’d be much bigger and much, much more expensive. And because they don’t run as stably as conventional ones. Yet.
I would add to it that quantum computers are very specialized and as of now do not perform better at most conventional tasks.
So similar to APUs / NPUs, they might just be a very specialized PC part if they become available to the broader public at all.
Because running a quantum computer is horribly expensive. And pointless, as all they seem to be able to run are some quantum computer benchmarks. I still have to see one solving a serious real world computation.
Actually, I personally doubt they will ever reach that point.
- we just learned how to make them fairly recently
- expensive to build
- expensive to run
- fucking massive if powerful enough to be useful
- Uniquely capable of solving very specific problems much faster, but not actually useful for general purpose computing
forgot that part
We, as a species, have basically failed to build a single one quantum computer that does anything. So… that’s why they’re not everything yet. It’s because there are currently approximately zero.
And the few there kind of are are massive and requires liquid helium to cool them to ungodly cold temperatures. And even then they don’t do much, besides allow researchers to test stuff.
they don’t really know if they work yet. its research level.
Most buzz about quantum computers is how they might be able to break traditional encryption algorithms by fast defactorisation of very big numbers. Though they still owe us proof, that this actually works.
There is this paper, which compares the “big” achievements in quantum defactorisation with a (not really) trained dog. Basically every of these achievements cheated with the prior knowledge of the factors or have chosen convenient numbers, while still being worlds away from common key sizes (like 2048 or 4096 bit).
Real usage for quantum cpmputers will probably still take quite a while to manifest.
I upgraded all of my devices to quantum awhile back. A lot of people like to hold off until the bugs are worked out, but I’ve always been an early adopter.
You’re still at the quantum stage? Man if you’re not already living in the post-quantum world, are you really living ?
Whoaa… you beat me there. I have to admit I left out the Appelwatch so far.
They need to be cooled to absolute zero. The hardware to do that weighs a couple thousand pounds, and needs a truckload of liquid helium. There’s no real way quantum computers will ever be portable, or even home units.
Well, don’t say never. Forever is a very long time. The scientific world of 100 years ago couldn’t predict PC’s and let alone smartphones based on technology and physics as they were known at the time. It’s insane to think about how much technology is crammed into this small device and how quickly we got here.
I’m pretty careful with absolute words like that.
There will need to be some major breakthrough in fundamental physics or material science to get the cooling apparatus much smaller than it is. That’s highly unlikely.And quantum computing at higher temps won’t work because the nature if it requires the atoms being measured to have zero resting energy.
Of course there will have to be a major scientific breakthrough. As there have been many scientific breakthroughs to get to where we are now with smartphones.
Your smartphone houses a lot of technology that was either nonexistent or room-sized at the time. I mean, in 1926 most people still moved around by horse-and-carriage, we had cameras but they were analog, as were film projectors. Now we have a 4k+ digital camera and an OLED screen and they’re only a small part of an entire array of technology scientists at the time couldn’t even fathom, except for maybe Nikola Tesla, although he also made a lot of predictions that turned out to be false.
As there have been many scientific breakthroughs to get to where we are now with smartphones.
That was a long series of inevitable predictable progress in engineering.
This isn’t a matter of ordinary engineering challenges to be overcome. What I’m talking about is something that upends our understanding of reality. Not just an evolution of what we already know, but a revolution that changes almost everything about our understanding of how the universe works. Discovering new unimagined forms of matter. Things like that.
That was a long series of inevitable predictable progress in engineering.
If it was so predictable, why couldn’t anyone in 1926 have predicted it with accuracy? The point is, they couldn’t and so can’t we.
Also, it’s definitely about engineering issues. In fact, scientists are already working on ways to overcome the major obstacles you named.
The general computer didn’t exist in 1927. Once it did, yes it was predicted and expected they would get smaller, more powerful, efficient, and common. There was no limitation of physics getting in the way of it.
Of course, every increment is predictable after you make the scientific breakthrough. Not before, though.
