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Quantum Computers

Started by Witchcraven Dec 12, 2002 at 1:57 AM 15 replies 250+ views

Original Post

125

Dec 12, 2002 at 1:57 AM

I was thinking, and if quantum computers are as fast as scientists say they are, will programmers eventually be uneeded? After the initial systems are laid down, a large application development environment could be made. Because of the massive amounts of processing power, very high level components that my grandma could use would perform as well as hand written "quantum assembly", if such a thing will exist. 3D games, and hell, even drivers could be made with something a 1000 easier to use than VB, and still perform well. There would only need to be a handful of "real" programmers, and the rest would be a bunch of dummies visually connecting components. It will be an age of bloatware and herds of stupid people making games 1000 time more realistic that Doom 3, using normal raytracers in realtime. The only useful people will be the mathmaticians implementing encryption and algorithms (but using "quantum basic"). People will probably do things like calculate the billionth place of pi, every cycle of an inner loop just for the hell of it. Sorry for the rant and errors, and just plain stupid shit. I refuse to proofread this thing.

Rob Loach

219

Rob Loach

Dec 12, 2002 at 2:05 AM

Thoughtful stuff. In interesting thing about Quantum Computers is that if you think you understand them, you really don''t.

- Rob Loach
OverTech Technologies
----------
"I don''t know half of you half as well as I should like; And I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
- Bilbo Baggins

Dean Harding

Dec 12, 2002 at 2:17 AM

Quantum computers won''t be what you''re thinking. They''re not really just a "really, really, really fast PC". It''ll be a whole new paradigm in computing.

I don''t think the "need" for software engineers will dissapear in our lifetimes

If I had my way, I''d have all of you shot!

codeka.com - Just click it.

alnite

410

alnite

Dec 12, 2002 at 2:42 AM

quote:
Original post by Dean Harding
Quantum computers won''t be what you''re thinking. They''re not really just a "really, really, really fast PC". It''ll be a whole new paradigm in computing.

Agree. I have heard about this so-called "qubit" (quantum bit), and it is not just 0 or 1, but could be 0, or 1, or 0 AND 1, or several 0s, several 1s..dunno. weird. It basically benefits from the ability of an electron to exist in two or more different states at the same time.

Maybe we won''t see bits anymore, but rather qubits. And those qubits will completely change the world of computing, especially programming. Hm...I wonder what ''>>'' and ''<<'' will do in qubits.

Beer Hunter

122

Beer Hunter

Dec 12, 2002 at 3:33 AM

Quantum computers make it possible to write much more efficient algorithms. Their strength is not in their clock speed. I actually don''t know what sort of clock speeds we''d be looking at - anyone have any ideas?

MDI

115

MDI

Dec 12, 2002 at 4:08 AM

IIRC their strength lies in their ability to perform massively parralell calculations.
I don''t even think they''ll have a clock speed.

TheSorcerer

Dec 12, 2002 at 4:11 AM

There is one thing I do know about the speed. We will not be talking about GHz. It will be way faster.

http://www.revjim.co.uk/paranoia/tech.html
It explains in normal terms about the possibilities of quantum computers.

Grizwald

Dec 12, 2002 at 9:29 AM

quote:

I was thinking, and if quantum computers are as fast as scientists say they are, will programmers eventually be uneeded? After the initial systems are laid down, a large application development environment could be made. Because of the massive amounts of processing power, very high level components that my grandma could use would perform as well as hand written "quantum assembly", if such a thing will exist. 3D games, and hell, even drivers could be made with something a 1000 easier to use than VB, and still perform well. There would only need to be a handful of "real" programmers, and the rest would be a bunch of dummies visually connecting components. It will be an age of bloatware and herds of stupid people making games 1000 time more realistic that Doom 3, using normal raytracers in realtime. The only useful people will be the mathmaticians implementing encryption and algorithms (but using "quantum basic"). People will probably do things like calculate the billionth place of pi, every cycle of an inner loop just for the hell of it.
Sorry for the rant and errors, and just plain stupid shit. I refuse to proofread this thing.

So thats where QBasic came from.....................

thebag

Dec 12, 2002 at 2:33 PM

quote:
I have heard about this so-called "qubit" (quantum bit), and it is not just 0 or 1, but could be 0, or 1, or 0 AND 1, or several 0s, several 1s..dunno. weird. It basically benefits from the ability of an electron to exist in two or more different states at the same time.

A qbit does indeed exist in many states at once and colapses down into one state when you test it to see what it is. The state of a single qbit is expressed as a|0> + b|1> where |a|^2 + |b|^2 = 1.

Witchcraven, quantum computers act nothing like pc''s, as someone else stated they are a completly new paradigm.

The best application so far is quantum cryptography which provably unbreakable and interception of signals is detectable.

Cold_Steel

103

Cold_Steel

Dec 12, 2002 at 5:41 PM

Yeah, we''ll still need programmers, but the programmers better learn to think differently. The regular old algorithms that we use today will need to be either updated or replaced to take advantage of the massively parallel architecture. Instead of doing 4*4 matrix math in 16+ steps, you''ll be able to it in 1 single step by operating on every element in the matrix simultaneously. I don''t know if this is really exactly how it works, but it is a similar idea at least.

For instance, there is already a quantum algorithm for calculating huge prime numbers very fast (which is bad for current encryption techs)

What I want to know, is how the scientists will deal with Heisenberg''s Uncertainty principle to guarantee that a calculation actually does what is supposed to.

thebag

Dec 12, 2002 at 7:09 PM

There are already quantum computers in existance btw.
Anyway a quantum computer will have many results in many states at any point in time - one of which will hold you answer. But extracting an answer from a quantum computer is tricky. One approach is to exaggerate the desired result, iteratively, until it dominates the solutions in the probablistic mix of states, then observe the system to collapse it into a single solution. Over applying such iteration, however, can have the opposite effect and cause the system to move away from the desired result.

Cold_Steel

103

Cold_Steel

Dec 12, 2002 at 8:12 PM

Oh, on a somewhat related note, what ever happened to cellular computing? At one point there was a lot of stuff going around on this, but I haven''t heard anything for a while.

Witchcraven

Author

125

Witchcraven

Dec 13, 2002 at 2:01 AM

cellular computing? How cool. sounds like something out of Mage: The Ascension.

thebag

Dec 13, 2002 at 5:39 AM

quote:
Original post by Cold_Steel
Oh, on a somewhat related note, what ever happened to cellular computing? At one point there was a lot of stuff going around on this, but I haven''t heard anything for a while.

There is still research going on in this area - one of my friends is currently doing a Phd in it.

seanw

Dec 13, 2002 at 11:35 PM

Why is it that a lot of programmers despise the idea of making programming easier and allowing more people to do it? The only real reason I could imagine would be threats it would make to the job market but the concept stinks on elitism. I think accomplished programmers have spent so much time learning what they know that it irritates them to think people can take ''short-cuts'' and create similar results.

thebag

Dec 14, 2002 at 5:35 AM

Quantum computing will never be easy, it cannot be programmed in a ''normal'' way. It involves messing around with sub-particles. Maybe there will one day be an easier way to operate a quantum computer but it''s still never going to be a pc.

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