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Quantum Computing in the NISQ era and beyond
Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) technology will be available in the
near future. Quantum computers with 50-100 qubits may be able to perform tasks
which surpass the capabilities of today's classical digital computers, but
noise in quantum gates will limit the size of quantum circuits that can be
executed reliably. NISQ devices will be useful tools for exploring many-body
quantum physics, and may have other useful applications, but the 100-qubit
quantum computer will not change the world right away --- we should regard it
as a significant step toward the more powerful quantum technologies of the
future. Quantum technologists should continue to strive for more accurate
quantum gates and, eventually, fully fault-tolerant quantum computing.Comment: 20 pages. Based on a Keynote Address at Quantum Computing for
Business, 5 December 2017. (v3) Formatted for publication in Quantum, minor
revision
Quantum Analogue Computing
We briefly review what a quantum computer is, what it promises to do for us,
and why it is so hard to build one. Among the first applications anticipated to
bear fruit is quantum simulation of quantum systems. While most quantum
computation is an extension of classical digital computation, quantum
simulation differs fundamentally in how the data is encoded in the quantum
computer. To perform a quantum simulation, the Hilbert space of the system to
be simulated is mapped directly onto the Hilbert space of the (logical) qubits
in the quantum computer. This type of direct correspondence is how data is
encoded in a classical analogue computer. There is no binary encoding, and
increasing precision becomes exponentially costly: an extra bit of precision
doubles the size of the computer. This has important consequences for both the
precision and error correction requirements of quantum simulation, and
significant open questions remain about its practicality. It also means that
the quantum version of analogue computers, continuous variable quantum
computers (CVQC) becomes an equally efficient architecture for quantum
simulation. Lessons from past use of classical analogue computers can help us
to build better quantum simulators in future.Comment: 10 pages, to appear in the Visions 2010 issue of Phil. Trans. Roy.
Soc.
Non-classical computing: feasible versus infeasible
Physics sets certain limits on what is and is not computable. These limits are very far from having been reached by current technologies. Whilst proposals for hypercomputation are almost certainly infeasible, there are a number of non classical approaches that do hold considerable promise. There are a range of possible architectures that could be implemented on silicon that are distinctly different from the von Neumann model. Beyond this, quantum simulators, which are the quantum equivalent of analogue computers, may be constructable in the near future
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