If Moore's Law hits a sinkhole...

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Radar

I provided meaningful and relevant references and facts backing up the assertion that Moore's law is in no danger of being violated because we'll have working quantum computers within 3 years.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

http://cellar.org/calendar.php?do=ge...=2008-9-20&c=1

So noted in the Cellar calendar entry for September 20, 2008.

A swing and a miss?

[classicman]

But, but, but, I just ordered mine online.



Btw, Great thread.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

A minority of people do the things that require a really powerful system: Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament 2K4

So in other words, the really important stuff.:p

I'm only half joking here. A huge amount of innovation is driven by entertainment. It has been argued that porn provided the early impetus to the VCR industry. More effort has been expended on developing, marketing, and getting health coverage for using Viagra than on many cancer medications. More Hummers were sold to soccer moms that the US military ever bought.

Collectively speaking, 350 million people in the US (or a few billion worldwide) looking for fun have more economic clout than military, government, or even business. If there's a solution there it will be found. One possibility is moving from electricity to light as in photonic computing. Another is by building a ternary computer instead of a binary computer, which would be more efficient. To do this might require a combination of materials to allow for three states instead of two.

[Elspode]

I'm headed out to MicroCenter to buy my quantum computer this morning. Soon, I'll be posting WTF photos from a kick ass machine! I sure hope they don't force me to buy it with Vista on it, though.

[mbpark]

TW,

How does it feel to be proven right, and that smack-talker Radar proven wrong?

Mitch

[Undertoad]

When the entry was added, I didn't say anything (there is usually nothing to be gained by arguing with Radar directly), but it was pretty clear that Radar was putting all his eggs in one company's PR basket ("D-Wave") and that the company was releasing just enough information to attract venture capital, a sure sign that they are too optimistic.

That company has now run two closed demos which attracted much more criticism than money, in which they claim that QC was happening and roughly the rest of the QC community says it was not. The demos, which included solving a Sudoku puzzle (!), involved tasks that a non-QC can perform.

After the demos, the last of which happened in November 2007 - one pro-D-Wave blogger noted "I think that there’s a lot to be said for D-Wave, and a lot to be said against it, but by far they’ve got the best chances of anyone at making a quantum computer in the next 5 years." In the next expo where they show, they are involved in a talk which claims their disruptive technology, amongst others such as optical communication and flash memory, "could lead to viable systems in the 2015-2020 timeframe."

Too often Radar uses a "conclusion first" approach: decide what the truth is, and then seek out any corroborating evidence. *Any* evidence will do, no matter how suspect, because it reflects "truth". We all do this from time to time, particularly in politics. The process of picking a side is practically arbitrary, like picking a team to root for in a sport. Once the side is picked, though, the chosen side represents all that is good, and the opposition represents all that is evil or bad.

And so by post #6 in the thread we are already into ad hominem and claims that we are Engineers and Know What We Are Talking About. At that point the whole thread becomes the usual boring insult-trading, and only the Cellar calendar can rescue us.

[Elspode]

I'd like to make a prediction. You can put it on the calendar if you like, too, UT.

We will have a new POTUS by January 20, 2009.

I have based this projection on careful research and evaluation of all available information, and I am very confident that my conclusion is correct.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You underestimate the power of Cheney.

[mbpark]

UT/Tony,

I've been calling the Cellar in various forms since 1991, and I really appreciate what you've done here over the years transforming this from Waffle on UNIX to this current setup.

His grandstanding was the ONLY time I have been insulted the way I have been on your system in 17 years of calling/posting here.

I have his post to me saved. If I EVER am in a position where he is presented to me or an associate at another company as an IT consultant, I will forward that post to the consulting agency who presents me to him, along with a strong "will not hire - EVER" notice.

I am no "Little Boy" who knows nothing. I actually know two people working in this field who have Ph.D's from Stanford in the related physics disciplines, and who are establishing a business working on practical applications of quantum computing (Tony, you have access to my LinkedIn profile, one is there directly linked to me). This is years from production, even with DARPA money, HP money, and IBM money.

Like I said....he's an idiot. 17 years of intelligent dialogue with many cool users here who I know personally, and he has to come along with his grandstanding attitude, not knowing who he's pissing off (and assuming they're a little boy newbie who knows nothing), and insulting everyone who doesn't agree with his point of view.

Radar can go fuck himself with something that has lots of splinters and exposed jagged surfaces.

Mitch

[xoxoxoBruce]

Mitch, don't take it personal. He directs that sort of crap at everyone that disagrees with him.
Your credentials are impeccable. You have gone out of your way to be most helpful, on a number of my(and other's) computer related problems, and never steered me(us) wrong. You know your shit.

tw, on the other hand, has ventured to be the last word, in areas not of his expertise... claiming to be the ultimate arbiter while expounding opinion, thus damaging his credibility.

[Radar]

http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?ma...t01returnid=21

What do you know, a working quantum computer being demonstrated. It didn't even take the 3 years I said it would take.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0903134202.htm

http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/...um-051408.html

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=3274.php


Also, new developments to make it work better.

Say what you want about your opinion of me, but the facts speak for themselves and I was correct.

Mitch, get over it. It was 3 damn years ago you whining little bitch. I'm not consulting anymore. I've moved up into management. I'm the I.T. Director and lead network engineer for a movie company in L.A.

[xoxoxoBruce]

In the 2 latest links:

Quantum computers take step toward practicality with demonstration of new device

MIT researchers may have found a way to overcome a key barrier to the advent of super-fast quantum computers,

Like UT said, nobody says it is a reality yet, except D-Wave.

[mbpark]

Radar,

I didn't like seeing that little post of yours dredged up again. You made assumptions which simply were not true then, and are not true now. The level of management you are at doesn't change a damn thing about who you are .

When they offer pricing, I'll be on the phone with them. There's at least one doctor in cancer research I know who will pay out the nose to make his equations run faster on his huge datasets (http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?page=bioinformatics).

However, the first applications of this type of physics and computing are going to be in areas such as GPS and encryption (think hardware random number generator first). General-purpose computing is still years off, no matter what a press release from late 2007 says.

[Undertoad]

Yeah, let's put it this way: if D-Wave actually produced a working model they would have suitors lining up on one side to give them tons of money (not just a few million in VC change) and suitors lined up on the other side to run applications.

But they don't. On either side.

What do you know, a working quantum computer being demonstrated. It didn't even take the 3 years I said it would take.

You're a tool. Here's what an MIT researcher had to say about the demonstration:

http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=291

At the group meeting preceding the talk, Farhi announced that he didn’t care what the press releases said, nor did he want to discuss what problems quantum computers can solve (since we academics can figure that out ourselves). Instead he wanted to focus on a single question: is D-Wave’s device a quantum computer or not? What followed was probably the most intense grilling of an invited speaker I’ve ever seen.

It quickly emerged that D-Wave wants to run a coherent quantum computation for microseconds, even though each of their superconducting qubits will have completely decohered within nanoseconds. Farhi had to ask Amin to repeat this several times, to make sure he’d gotten it right.

Amin’s claim was that what looks like total decoherence in the computational basis is irrelevant — since for adiabatic quantum computation, all that matters is what happens in the basis of energy eigenstates. In particular, Amin claimed to have numerical simulations showing that, if the temperature is smaller than the spectral gap, then one can do adiabatic quantum computation even if the conventional coherence times (the t1 and t2) would manifestly seem to prohibit it.

The physicists questioned Amin relentlessly on this one claim. I think it’s fair to say that they emerged curious but severely skeptical, not at all convinced by the calculations Amin provided, and determined to study the issue for themselves.

In other words, this was science as it should be. In contrast to their bosses, Amin and Berkley made a genuine effort to answer questions. They basically admitted that D-Wave’s press releases were litanies of hype and exaggeration, but nevertheless thought they had a promising path to a quantum computer. On several occasions, they seemed to be struggling to give an honest answer that would still uphold the company line.

That's D-Wave's top guys, Radar, right there in bold. They didn't say they have a QC. They said they thought they had a path to one. So if you have a tiny capacity for reading comprehension you now know for certain that you are a tool and will not continue to argue the point to make yourself look EVEN more idiotic, if that's possible.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

In the 2 latest links:




Like UT said, nobody says it is a reality yet, except D-Wave.

They demonstrated a working version of a quantum computer. Case closed.