Technological Impact of Quantum Computing

[sanman]

What will the technological impact of Quantum Computing be? What meaningful benefits will Quantum Computing bring humanity? What will be the order of progression of its impact?

How will Quantum Computing advance our technological growth curve?

Where will the money in Quantum Computing be? What sorts of job growth will it create?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

These are some really big questions. Here are a few links that may answer some of those questions.

What Comes After the Computer Chip? Quantum Computing Holds Much Promise.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t..._computing_and_the_future_of_moore_s_law.html

The Future of Quantum Information Processing
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1163

 

[ama]

It will continue the exponential growth that we have seen recently in computing technology.

 

[schema]

So far the evolution seems to be keeping in line with Moore's law. Within the next ten years I assume the predicted leap will be quantum computing. Maybe once we perfect quantum computing, we can start perfecting quantum theory. ha!

 

[ama]

I wonder what comes after quantum theory. Is there anything smaller in scale and more fascinating than quantum physics? I really want to know.

 

[schema]

I wonder what comes after quantum theory. Is there anything smaller in scale and more fascinating than quantum physics? I really want to know.

there are pheomina within Quantum dynatimcs that could be explored and explained. I am very partial to entanglment. We are on the verge of quantum teleportaion of massive objects, which opens the door to new areas of study.

 

[TomServo]

I asked a Nobel Laureate whose work pertains to quantum computing what it would mean. He told me it would be beneficial for a certain class of problems (non-polynomial time problems) but not do anything for other, more traditional problems. He said it would be like how you have a graphics card for graphics, you would also have a "quantum component" attached to a traditional computer that handles those algorithms for which quantum computers would be useful.

See, I was under the impression that quantum computers did everything regular computers did but a jillion times faster, so you could do things like real-time ray-tracing and all kinds of crazy Star Trek level computing stuff. But I was wrong, it's usefulness is "restricted" (to use a poor choice of words) to certain kinds of problems.

If those types of problems became solveable, then I expect all kinds of new applications to arise that we can't foresee right now, beyond the obvious ones. Just like in the early days of regular computers, nobody foresaw video games and apps that simulate fish tanks, they just saw ballistics tables and diagonalized matrices.

 

[fractalCow]

If you're interested in learning more about quantum mechanics and quantum computation sanman, I would highly recommend having a look at the free edX course "Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation" by UC Berkeley.
I'm doing it myself and I am learning a lot about quantum computation from it. It has, at least for me, made sense out of the subject and all the buzz surrounding it.
If going all the way through the course is too much of a hassle then you could still check out the excellent resources it has. The course is run by academics who are at the forefront of quantum computation research. Hence, the resources they recommend should be worth checking out for you. Here's a few that they recommend:
http://www.quantiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Eeuqh9QfNI&list=PLA27CEA1B8B27EB67
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

 

[rollingstein]

Quantum Computing is overhyped. As of today we have close to zero problems where a Quantum Computer has shown demonstrable speedup over a Classical Computer.

It does have potential. But it is far from proven. Any extrapolation to if it will do anything practical in the near future is questionable.

Even in core areas like factoring numbers, the largest QC success is ~20 I think. It's laughably primitive at present is my opinion.

Decoherence is likely to be a big fly in the ointment. Time will tell if we can overcome these hurdles but I'm not terribly optimistic.

Frankly, today's QC has very little to offer to extend or speed up conventional, "useful" computing technology.

Whoever said that we are on the "verge of quantum teleportaion of massive objects,"; I don't know what he's basing this optimism on. I'd love to see quantum teleportation of any object. Period. Forget massive ones.

 

[sanman]

What about "sparse coding" problems? I've read that Google has used it to good effect there.