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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Here's what the people who claimed Google's quantum supremacy have to say about it
SANTA BARBARA, California—Early this autumn, a paper leaked on a NASA site indicating Google engineers had built and tested hardware that achieved what's termed "quantum supremacy," completing calculations that would be impossible on a traditional computer. The paper was quickly pulled offline, and Google remained silent, leaving the rest of us to speculate about their plans for this device and any follow-ons the company might be preparing.
That speculation ended today, as Google released the final version of the paper that had leaked. But perhaps more significantly, the company invited the press to its quantum computing lab, talked about its plans, and gave us time to chat with the researchers behind the work.
"I'm not going to bother explaining the quantum supremacy paper—if you were invited to come here, you probably all read the leaked paper," quipped Hartmut Neven, the head of Google's Quantum AI lab. But he found it hard to resist the topic entirely, and the other people who talked with reporters were more than happy to expand on Neven's discussion.
Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5) (DX)
Previously: Google: We've achieved quantum supremacy! IBM: Nope. And stop using that word, please
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:57PM (2 children)
3 million bitcoin in 2 seconds... More fake news. From the comments there:
And even that response ignores the difficulty adjustments, etc.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 26 2019, @10:57PM (1 child)
If the difficulty adjustments scale up to account for quantum computers, only those with access to quantum computing will be able to mine economically - and I believe a small napkin sketch analysis will show that the quantum miners will (eventually) be mining for a profit earned from the losses of the ASIC miners, who today enjoy profits from the losses of the GPU miners, who enjoy profits from the losses of the CPU miners... But, when a miner is running on stolen compute power and/or stolen electricity, that's pure profit.
Meanwhile, I don't think the total bitcoin mining power budget has dropped below the Swiss national electric consumption level yet, has it?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:14AM
I don't quite get what points you are trying to make here.
In theory, yes. Although that would depend on how much the quantum computer costs + power to run it, vs the cost of ASIC hardware + power to run it. The quantum computer may be more efficient at mining, resulting in lower power costs, but the initial cost of the machine may be so high, that it makes more sense to just get a bunch of ASICs and mine on that. As the price of quantum computers drops due to increased supply with time, more people will find it more economical to switch to quantum mining, difficulty will adjust, and life goes on.
It seems to track how the CPU->GPU->FPGA->ASIC bitcoin mining system has worked so far, along with every other technological evolution that has occurred in the past, what is wrong with that?
This bit I don't get. How is someone mining for profit now doing so from past losses? I mined bitcoin on CPUs back when it first came out. In no way do I feel the modern ASIC miners are profiting from my "losses", primarily because I had no losses.
Back when I could afford the cost of hardware and power to mine, I did. Once the ASICs took over, I could not compete. Even if I bought the same ASIC hardware, my heavily green-taxed electricity made sure I could not spin a profit from the venture. So, I stopped mining. The other miners are not profiting from my losses, because when I worked out the point at which I would start having losses, I got out.
They are profiting from the market demand for bitcoin, and an environment that keeps their costs lower than mine.
Yes, and when someones card or paypal is compromised, that is pure profit as well. That is why crime is alluring to some people. That really has nothing to do with bitcoin, just a statement of fact to do with crime.
Probably not, but it still costs less than 1/3 of the traditional financial systems power consumption, to achieve the same goals (keeping track of balances and transactions).