I think the intent is to reality check some of the marketing coming out of Google/IBM/Intel/Rigetti that seem to be trying to imply that quantum computers actually exist today (as opposed to laboratory science experiments which are what actually exist now) and are just a few years away from commercialization after which some form of Moore's Law will take hold. I've seen a number of Pop Sci articles that say things like "today's quantum computers fill an entire room like 1960s mainframes" or "today's leading edge quantum computers contain 53 qubits, experts say we'll need n-qubits to solve x problem which is intractable on a classical computer". All of this is intended to imply we just need to figure out how to shrink these existing quantum computers down while expanding the number of qubits available and we're about to have a quantum repeat of the PC Revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The pop-sci headlines hinting that quantum supremacy shenanigans means that we are close to some new paradigm of general purpose quantum computers. I suppose.
DebtDeflation|6 years ago
mekkkkkk|6 years ago