107
Supercomputer makes calculations in blink of an eye that take rivals 47 years
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
107 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
76332 readers
1988 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
One thing bothers me with this… How do we know the results are correct ?
The problems which are calculated, such as finding prime factors of an integer, take non-polynomial (NP) time on a classical computer to solve. But NP problems, as opposed to NP-hard, can by definition be confirm in P (polynomial) time on a classical computer. Therefore, we can easily confirm that the answer is correct using classical computers.
On an aside, I used the example of prime factorization because it is one of the most well known problems that can be accelerated via quantum computing using Shor's algorithm. Using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer, an integer can be factorized in P time. This is opposed to NP time on a classical computer.
Also, note that this acceleration provided by Shor's algorithm is what people are talking about when they say "quantum breaks encryption". I don't like when people say that though because quantum computers don't break all encryption schemes. In fact, there is only one mainstream encryption scheme which is susceptible and that is RSA. Don't get me wrong, if RSA is comprised that would compromise a LOT of legacy systems. But we already have new public key ciphers, such as elliptic curves, which are ready to replace RSA once quantum computers become large enough to actually implement an attack against RSA.