0:00

Spukhafte

0:00

Fernwirkungen. Did I say that?

0:03

Spooky action at a distance?

0:04

Yeah.

0:06

Oh dear.

0:06

What is that? What does that mean?

0:08

It's one of the

0:08

early bits of weirdness people

0:11

noticed and quantum mechanics,

0:11

something in particular

0:14

disturbed Einstein. It's these

0:14

very strange long distance

0:17

correlations, where you can have

0:17

a resource — Dr. Walden and I

0:23

are sitting together and we, we

0:23

share a couple qubits, say, for

0:26

example, then we go, I go out to

0:26

the Andromeda Galaxy, he goes to

0:31

the other side of the Milky Way.

0:31

And the statistical behavior of

0:35

his qubit and my qubit are

0:35

weirdly correlated in ways that

0:39

are much different than if we

0:39

split any other resource.

0:42

There's sort of an over

0:42

correlation. And it's almost

0:45

like my qubit and his qubit were

0:45

talking to each other faster

0:49

than the speed of light. But

0:49

they're not. And that is

0:52

impossible. But there's

0:52

correlations that make it seem

0:56

like that is true statistically.

0:56

So Einstein first used the term

1:02

spukhafte Fernwirkungen. It

1:02

became sort of a slogan

1:06

associated with the weirdness of

1:06

quantum mechanics.

1:10

Yeah, Einstein

1:10

didn't really like quantum

1:12

mechanics. And so he did a lot

1:12

of research trying to disprove

1:16

it, and instead made tremendous

1:16

contributions to the field by

1:21

showing that these weird things

1:21

actually are true.

1:26

Well, hello, and welcome back to the Informatics Cafe. I'm your host, Mike

1:28

Nitardy. And I'm so pleased and

1:31

proud to have with me here in

1:31

the cafe today, Dr. James

1:34

Walden. He's a PhD in physics

1:34

and he is the director of the

1:38

Center for Information Security

1:38

here at Northern Kentucky

1:41

University. And also Dr. Kevin

1:41

Kirby. He's the Dean of the

1:45

College of Informatics here at

1:45

Northern Kentucky University.

1:47

And gentlemen, it's great to

1:47

have you here in the Informatics

1:50

Cafe with me, and we're going to

1:50

be talking about the exciting

1:53

field of quantum computing. So

1:53

welcome. Thank you for being

1:57

here today.

1:57

Thank you, Mike.

1:58

It's a pleasure to be here, Mike.

1:59

Why don't you

1:59

start off and give us your

2:02

elevator speech — if there is

2:02

such a thing — as to what is

2:04

quantum computing?

2:06

Well, I'll start with a value judgment. As a computer scientist, I think

2:07

quantum computing is the most

2:12

interesting thing to happen in

2:12

computer science, since there

2:14

was computer science.

2:15

Wow!

2:15

Quantum computing

2:15

is computing using a device that

2:19

maintains its internal state,

2:19

basically, as an indeterminate

2:25

state.

2:25

Right.

2:25

You have an undisturbed system, and you have computation going on. But as

2:27

soon as you open the box to look

2:30

at it, it sort of collapses.

2:32

Okay.

2:32

You can't tell

2:32

anything about its internal

2:35

state until you observe it.

2:38

There's this

2:38

interesting power that comes

2:40

from quantum mechanics. Someone

2:40

once said quantum mechanics is

2:43

what happens when nobody's looking.

2:46

Observations don't necessarily refer to a human looking at it. It is really, if

2:48

any small particle hits the

2:55

atoms involved in the quantum

2:55

computation that counts as an

2:58

observation.

3:00

But the power you

3:00

get from that, and the new

3:02

understanding of information,

3:02

we're so used to thinking in

3:05

computer science of bits, ones

3:05

and zeros ons and off, and..

3:07

Exactly.

3:08

... building computers out of those principles, to have a whole set

3:09

of new principles with a little

3:13

sort of, I don't know, almost

3:13

supernatural mystery to it...

3:17

Exactly!

3:18

... is very

3:18

compelling. The bottom line is

3:20

there is the promise that we can

3:20

do computations, amazingly, mind

3:25

bogglingly faster than we could

3:25

have imagined without quantum

3:28

technology.

3:29

They can't compute

3:29

anything that our classical

3:31

computer can't. But they can do

3:31

certain tasks much, much faster.

3:38

That's why it's attracting investors and researchers.

3:40

Uh, maybe I should

3:40

explain what a qubit is. So

3:43

quantum computers compute using

3:43

qubits — quantum bits — rather

3:47

than our traditional bits. So a

3:47

bit is just a zero or one, which

3:52

can be represented in a lot of

3:52

different ways physically. So

3:56

normally, in your RAM it's

3:56

represented by the charge. Then

4:00

your memory chip's inside your

4:00

computers, and if the charge is

4:04

a certain level, it's a one if

4:04

it's a different level, it's a

4:08

zero. And it's either one or the

4:08

other. So the charge can be

4:12

slightly higher or lower. But

4:12

basically, there's a threshold.

4:16

If it's above the threshold is

4:16

one, if it's below the threshold

4:20

is zero. It is very clear cut.

4:20

But qubits can be in a

4:24

superposition of state. It has a

4:24

certain chance to be a zero a

4:28

certain chance to be a one. And

4:28

as it interacts with other other

4:33

qubits, those probabilities

4:33

change. And it remains that way

4:37

until you measure it. That's

4:37

called collapsing the wave

4:40

function and then you get either

4:40

a definite zero or a one result.

4:45

So you can read off the end

4:45

result. But while you're doing

4:49

the computation, the qubits are

4:49

in this probabilistic state

4:53

whether they're either a zero or

4:53

one. The classical statement of

4:57

that problem in quantum

4:57

mechanics is Schrodinger cat,

5:00

where you rather cruelly seal a

5:00

cat in a box with a poison

5:04

that's activated by a

5:04

radioactive sample. Whether a

5:08

radioactive sample emits a

5:08

particle or not is a purely

5:11

physical probabilistic thing.

5:11

You can't say it's going to emit

5:16

in one second, two seconds.

5:16

Until you observe it you don't

5:20

know when that happens. And so

5:20

the cat in the box is either

5:24

alive or dead. And you can't

5:24

tell it without opening the box.

5:29

And it's not just

5:29

that the cat is alive or dead,

5:32

right? It's, if you could flip a

5:32

coin and say it's alive or dead.

5:36

No, it's some, it's sort of sort

5:36

of both at once, and you can

5:40

detect the difference between a

5:40

cat that's — flip a coin alive,

5:44

or 50 percent alive 50 percent

5:44

dead, you know, or in some way,

5:46

both — you can actually pass

5:46

them through a certain quantum

5:50

gate that will give different

5:50

results depending on whether

5:52

it's in the spooky superimposed

5:52

state or not. And that is just

5:58

oh, my gosh, it makes you dizzy to think about.

5:59

I was gonna say...

6:00

It's why we're in the business, Mike.

6:01

Exactly right. Exactly right.

6:02

But the cool thing

6:02

is that that intermediate state

6:05

can perform computations

6:05

extremely faster than classical

6:09

computers with regular bits can

6:09

do.

6:12

My second favorite

6:12

part about qubits is you can't

6:12

That's amazing. copy them. How many times do you

6:16

go through a day and hit copy

6:19

and paste in your document? You

6:19

can't copy sets of qubits,

6:23

there's something called a no cloning theorem. Really? Wow!

6:26

How do you do, how do you do

6:26

computing without copying stuff?

6:32

That's why it's hard. So does that mean

6:33

that it's hard to replicate? I mean, so if if...

6:37

A lot of a lot of

6:37

our algorithms, you copy the

6:40

contents of this variable to

6:40

this variable.

6:42

Right.

6:42

You don't even think about it when you're writing code.

6:44

Yeah.

6:45

You can't actually

6:45

do it, not reliably, in quantum

6:50

computing. They're fundamental limits.

6:53

Yeah, and it would

6:53

also have impacts on debugging a

6:55

program. So normally, when

6:55

you're debugging, you're looking

6:58

at the intermediate internal

6:58

state and trying to figure out

7:01

what went wrong. But of course,

7:01

if you look at the internal

7:04

state of a quantum computer, it

7:04

collapses and you no longer have

7:09

the internal state you wanted to

7:09

observe. Because you because

7:13

exactly that you looked at it.

7:13

The computation stops at that

7:16

point and can't be restarted.

7:18

Wow. Wow. So

7:18

essentially, we're at the cusp

7:22

of something transformative that

7:22

is exciting, because it's like,

7:26

a new birth of computer science

7:26

almost.

7:29

It is. Yeah.

7:29

Yeah. We're both

7:29

saying yes to that. Sounds tidy

7:32

but I think it's true.

7:33

So I think we're we have to go back down to my level. [laughter] So Dr. Walden, why don't you go

7:36

ahead and give us a little bit about your background.

7:39

Okay, I got

7:39

interested in quantum computing

7:42

when I heard about it in

7:42

graduate school, when Peter Shor

7:45

was giving his talk tour at

7:45

universities about Shor's

7:49

algorithm, which provides a way

7:49

on a quantum computer to factor

7:55

an integer into its prime

7:55

factors. So you can express any

8:00

integer as a number of prime

8:00

numbers multiplied together.

8:03

It's very fast, of course, to

8:03

get the product, you just

8:06

multiply two numbers together.

8:06

But to go backwards and take a

8:09

large number and figure out what

8:09

two prime numbers were

8:13

multiplied to get it is very

8:13

difficult. And before that, no

8:17

one had an argument to why

8:17

quantum computing could be

8:21

better or faster than classical

8:21

computing. But he invented the

8:25

first algorithm for that. You

8:25

might think that's an abstract

8:29

mathematical problem to factor a

8:29

number, it's like, who cares.

8:32

But all of our E-commerce,

8:32

software downloads and such are

8:38

validated by digital signatures.

8:38

And the algorithm for that

8:42

depends on it being slow to

8:42

factor a number. And so if

8:48

quantum computing becomes

8:48

feasible, we have to find a new

8:53

system for securing everything

8:53

on the internet.

8:55

What about your role in in physics, in your background in physics, does that

8:57

play anything?

8:59

Quantum computing,

8:59

certainly back in the 20th

9:02

century, was really more of a

9:02

physics problem than a computer

9:05

science problem. There weren't

9:05

any of the traditional tools,

9:10

principles, and such that really

9:10

feel more part of the computing

9:15

field. That's changed since

9:15

then. But still, there's, you

9:21

sort of need a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, which most computer

9:23

science students don't take...

9:27

Right. No that makes sense. ...to understand how it works.

9:28

There are efforts to do things

9:32

like quantum programming

9:32

languages, and such to hide the

9:35

physics behind it. But right now

9:35

in the field, you really have to

9:38

have an understanding of quantum

9:38

physics as well as computation.

9:42

And actually, Dr.

9:42

Walden should point out that not

9:46

only does he have a PhD in

9:46

particle physics from Carnegie

9:49

Mellon, he actually worked for

9:49

Intel. So he's done both the Q

9:52

and the C in quantum computing.

9:55

This is very cool.

9:56

This is me as Dean.

9:57

No no I know. I

9:57

love it. No, it's great. It's

9:59

great. So So how did how did you

9:59

get interested in it? Other than

10:02

being obviously the Dean of the

10:02

College of Informatics, and it

10:05

is the newest hottest thing

10:05

since computer science got

10:08

started?

10:08

Yeah, well, my

10:08

interest in physics is sort of

10:12

strange. I had a really

10:12

interesting ninth grade

10:17

astronomy teacher in Detroit, he

10:17

handed me a book called The Tao

10:21

of Physics, you might remember

10:21

it. And it had a spread in the

10:24

middle of the book, just two

10:24

images and one was a black and

10:27

white image — I think it was the

10:27

Upanishads written in Sanskrit,

10:31

and the other one was a long, it

10:31

was like a field lagrangian or

10:35

something from particle physics.

10:35

And there are two things that

10:37

it... Well, certainly as a 14

10:37

year old I had no clue. But they

10:41

were beautiful and mysterious.

10:41

So I said I want to know what

10:45

what those mean. And so I was

10:45

attracted to physics because it

10:48

was weird and mysterious and

10:48

incomprehensible. I wasn't

10:51

particularly good at it. I went

10:51

on to get a PhD in computer

10:55

science, but I was always

10:55

interested in natural

10:57

computation, biological

10:57

computation. But I did manage to

11:01

do a cognate in physics for my

11:01

PhD, which means very, very

11:04

narrow. And actually, I did

11:04

specialize in quantum mechanics.

11:07

So later, when quantum computing

11:07

came around, it was just, oh, I

11:11

love this stuff. I want to teach

11:11

it. I want to hire people who

11:14

can do it.

11:14

So like I said, I usually don't talk about myself, but I'll give you a little bit

11:16

of background. I'm a strong

11:19

liberal arts kind of a guy, even

11:19

though I got my degree in

11:21

finance. So I like numbers. But

11:21

I don't do a lot of

11:24

computations. I'm a lawyer. My

11:24

experience with computers is

11:28

just sitting in front of them

11:28

and having them do whatever I

11:31

want them to do, or at least

11:31

what I asked them to do or try

11:33

to get them to do. To what

11:33

extent will quantum computing

11:38

change computing right now, as

11:38

we know, it?

11:41

Depends what you

11:41

mean by right now. If you mean

11:44

technology, very little. I mean,

11:44

a lot of the literature compares

11:49

quantum computing right now to

11:49

the Wright Flyer in what was it

11:53

1903, the Wright Brothers plane,

11:53

but it's almost like, yes, you

11:57

see this sad little plane making

11:57

a hop. But the potential is so

12:01

big people are already

12:01

developing flight reservation

12:04

systems and modern airports with

12:04

40 gates, and so on. Because the

12:08

promise is still there. The

12:08

ideas about quantum algorithms

12:12

date from the 90s, Dr. Walden

12:12

was talking about a few classic

12:16

ones. But they were very much

12:16

pencil and paper, but people

12:19

have started to build this

12:19

stuff. It's a few to several

12:22

years out, but progress is so

12:22

fast. And if they manage to

12:26

build things at a certain scale,

12:26

yes, codes will be broken

12:30

optimization problems will be

12:30

solved super, super fast.

12:33

Logistics and supply chain

12:33

problems are a classic one, now.

12:37

So within the horizon of a few

12:37

years, it probably will be

12:41

transformative.

12:42

So does that mean

12:42

that the way that my mobile

12:46

phone works, the way that my

12:46

laptop works, the way that our

12:48

internet works today is that

12:48

going to change if quantum

12:52

computing lives up to you know,

12:52

all of this promise that we're

12:56

discussing?

12:57

Yeah, you won't

12:57

have a quantum computer on your

13:00

desktop. The physics requirement

13:00

of the super cooling, and such

13:04

just won't work at either a

13:04

price or physical scale that you

13:07

would want one in your office.

13:07

But there'll be more like, sort

13:12

of an alternative type of

13:12

supercomputer to solve really

13:16

complex problems. So now we have

13:16

all these high performance

13:19

computing clusters and centers,

13:19

probably there will be quantum

13:23

computers added to that.

13:25

What I'm thinking

13:25

in my mind then is it's almost

13:27

like a Back to the Future in the

13:27

sense of, if you go through the

13:30

history of computers, you go

13:30

through these larger computers

13:33

down to the smallest computers.

13:33

And that's we're so proud to get

13:36

there. But what it sounds like

13:36

to me is that there's going to

13:38

be these special computer rooms,

13:38

again, that have these quantum

13:41

computers, whereas the rest of

13:41

us aren't going to have access

13:45

to that. Is that accurate?

13:47

Perhaps, but that's, that's normal now, right? I mean, yes, we do have a

13:49

server room right here in

13:51

Griffin Hall, in the College of

13:51

Informatics which looks cool and

13:54

Star Trek like, but a lot of our

13:54

students are using, say, Amazon

13:58

Web Services or other places

13:58

where their actual computation

14:01

is going on, for example, in our

14:01

machine learning course. So in

14:05

fact, right now, through Amazon

14:05

Web Services, I can write some

14:09

code here in Griffin Hall in

14:09

Python and spin it up on a

14:14

quantum computer somewhere.

14:15

So you can

14:15

potentially get access to

14:18

quantum computers, just like you

14:18

could through the cloud right

14:21

now.

14:21

Yep.

14:22

To any okay.

14:23

Right, it's basically another cloud service.

14:25

Okay. So they're going to speak to each other, there's going to be a a way for,

14:26

you know, old classic computers

14:31

to understand what quantum

14:31

computers are saying and doing.

14:34

Yes, exactly. I

14:34

mean, I think, I mean, you

14:37

use... Well there are some

14:37

specialized programming

14:40

languages — what is it Q Sharp I

14:40

think is Microsoft's quantum

14:43

computing language — but they're

14:43

also their libraries for very,

14:46

very familiar programming

14:46

languages that you can write

14:50

your code in to develop quantum

14:50

circuits. And then run them on

14:55

quantum computers elsewhere made

14:55

by different companies — both

14:58

the big names like you know,

14:58

IBM, Google, Microsoft, but

15:02

also, some specialized companies

15:02

are out there building quantum

15:07

computers.

15:08

But it sounds like

15:08

the number one thing here is the

15:11

speed. Is that really the

15:11

promise?

15:14

Yes.

15:14

Yes.

15:14

And without the

15:14

speed, is there any benefit to

15:18

it?

15:18

I think there's an

15:18

intellectual benefit. I mean, I

15:21

think the notion of, of what it

15:21

teaches us about what

15:23

information means is very

15:23

important.

15:25

Nice.

15:25

And it's fed back into the heart of physics. I mean, there's some... Quantum

15:27

mechanics is a bunch of

15:31

calculational rules, and a lot

15:31

of people — I mean, it's hard

15:35

for humans to understand what

15:35

it's actually describing. And

15:38

there's been sort of a reverse

15:38

effect where thinking about

15:41

information speaking as the

15:41

College of Informatics, has

15:44

helped make the foundations of

15:44

quantum mechanics clearer. So I

15:50

think there's always going to be

15:50

intellectual stuff and head

15:53

scratching stuff, even if we

15:53

can't build fast machines, but

15:56

we will build fast quantum computers.

15:58

All the rage, it

15:58

seems like now in the news, and

16:01

the financial world is

16:01

blockchain and crypto. And so

16:04

what does quantum computing and

16:04

the speed with unlocking

16:07

everything do with that world?

16:09

Right, quantum

16:09

computing, assuming we can build

16:13

a large enough one to do the

16:13

computations, can completely

16:13

Wow, that doesn't sound very

16:13

good for the crypto world.

16:16

break the security of

16:16

blockchains that basically all

16:20

cryptocurrencies are based on.

16:20

You would be able to generate

16:24

new blocks very fast. And

16:24

basically, the way blockchain

16:28

works is that the longest

16:28

blockchain wins. So there's

16:32

always this competition with

16:32

multiple groups trying to add

16:36

the next block to the blockchain

16:36

because you get a reward in

16:40

cryptocurrency for doing so. And

16:40

that's how your transactions get

16:44

added. These people miners,

16:44

bundle them up, put them in a

16:48

block and try to compute the

16:48

correct block the fastest.

16:52

Quantum computing would give you

16:52

an unmatchable advantage in

16:56

that. And if you can win that

16:56

race, you can do things like

17:00

unwind transactions, double spin

17:00

your bitcoins, and so forth.

17:08

It's disruptive.

17:09

I was gonna say, talk about a disruptive technology.

17:11

With a capital D.

17:12

Let's bring all

17:12

this you know, home a little bit

17:14

to us here in the College of

17:14

Informatics. What are we doing

17:17

here in this area right now?

17:19

Well, James, do we write a grant proposal to get a couple of D-Wave machines down

17:21

the hall here in Griffin Hall.

17:24

That could be fun.

17:24

[laughter]

17:25

Probably got.

17:25

We just push.

17:26

Teach a course. I think it needs to get into the

17:28

curriculum in computer science.

17:31

I mean, companies who aren't

17:31

even tech companies are thinking

17:35

about quantum computing. They're

17:35

preparing for the day, where

17:38

blockchain breaks, where

17:38

everything that relies on crypto

17:42

breaks, prepping for the quantum

17:42

world. And our students need to

17:45

do that with skill set. So one

17:45

of the limiting factors in the

17:47

growth of quantum technology is

17:47

the skill sets from students. As

17:51

a university one of the exciting

17:51

things about quantum computing

17:55

is you can do a lot of it with

17:55

just a computer science

17:59

background in some relatively

17:59

elementary math, say linear

18:03

algebra. Some of the code you

18:03

can write with these toolkits,

18:07

is accessible. So I'd love our

18:07

students to come out with a with

18:10

a taste of that. It's part of

18:10

looking forward, it's part of

18:12

what we do at NKU.

18:13

Excellent.

18:14

On the security

18:14

side, we do teach students about

18:17

post-quantum cryptography. So we

18:17

don't really explain how quantum

18:21

computation works in detail, but

18:21

we give sort of a broad sense of

18:25

what it is, and how it provides

18:25

the speed ups. And this is

18:29

leading to all this research and

18:29

post quantum cryptography and

18:32

causing people to use longer

18:32

cryptographic keys. Current

18:36

quantum computers are a long way

18:36

from breaking modern key sizes.

18:40

They would need to have around a

18:40

million times as many qubits and

18:44

the error correction facilities

18:44

would at least need to be 100

18:47

times better than they currently

18:47

are. But even with that the

18:51

National Security Agency and

18:51

National Insititue of Standards

18:53

and Technology have issued

18:53

standards for post-quantum key

18:57

sizes. So people are already

18:57

starting to adapt to make it

19:02

take a longer time for quantum

19:02

computing to catch up while

19:04

people are developing these

19:04

newer encryption algorithms that

19:08

won't depend on problems that

19:08

are easily rapidly solved by

19:12

quantum computers.

19:14

How far off are we

19:14

from this being a reality for

19:19

our everyday lives?

19:20

I'd say we don't

19:20

really know yet. I recently read

19:24

the National Academy of Sciences

19:24

report on quantum computing. And

19:28

they were tasked to give a

19:28

timeline and they basically said

19:31

that they couldn't was their

19:31

summary that there's a certain

19:35

breakthroughs we need in things

19:35

like quantum error correction,

19:38

and just how to physically build

19:38

a quantum computer.

19:42

But of course,

19:42

people are still doing proof of

19:44

concepts now. A lot of companies

19:44

are investing in that even at

19:47

the small scale.

19:49

There's there's currently a wide variety of approaches to physically build

19:50

them and we don't really know

19:53

which of those will be

19:53

successful scaling up if any, or

19:57

whether we'll need to find new

19:57

physical principles to build

20:00

them on. So we don't really know

20:00

yet.

20:03

So we had a group

20:03

of visitors here in the College

20:05

of Informatics from the Fidelity

20:05

Center for Advanced Technology

20:08

in Boston. And I stumbled across

20:08

their work where they were using

20:13

quantum computation to simulate

20:13

securities. They were doing an

20:18

optimization problem, what's the

20:18

right mix of pretend stocks to

20:21

optimize returns in a portfolio.

20:21

It's got zillions of variables,

20:27

and you want to do something

20:27

called annealing to find a

20:30

solution. And that's one thing

20:30

that quantum computers may be

20:34

very good at long before they

20:34

can sort of break blockchain and

20:38

crypto. So you see, companies

20:38

starting to get their feet wet,

20:42

and they're starting to invest

20:42

in that and train their people

20:45

in that.

20:45

That's obviously going to be a very disruptive technology. How do you know when

20:47

you're getting a return? You

20:51

know, if you're starting to

20:51

invest in it, is it just for the

20:54

expectation that you might, you

20:54

know, land something it at some

20:57

point? Or is there an actual

20:57

expectation of return and

21:02

getting some money to make off

21:02

of it within the next 10 to 15

21:06

years?

21:06

It's down the road,

21:06

but people invest with long

21:09

horizons occasionally.

21:10

No, that's true. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

21:12

And certainly, the

21:12

National Security Agency is

21:16

heavily investing as are the

21:16

intelligence agencies in China

21:19

and Russia and other major

21:19

countries because they don't

21:23

want to be the last person who's

21:23

able to break all encryption.

21:26

No doubt, I would

21:26

imagine where they are on the

21:29

progress. And it's probably very

21:29

guarded,

21:32

I think, right now

21:32

that ability is the main thing

21:36

that's attracting funding to it.

21:36

But because I believe we will

21:41

have post quantum cryptography

21:41

in the next decade or two,

21:45

quantum computing needs to find

21:45

other solutions. There's several

21:48

types of quantum computers and

21:48

the big division is between

21:51

digital and analog.

21:52

Okay.

21:53

And that used to be true with classical computers. I don't know if

21:55

anybody still has an analog,

21:58

traditional computer anymore.

21:58

But in the mid 20th century,

22:02

they could solve certain physics

22:02

problems, differential equations

22:06

and such, faster than digital

22:06

computers of the time. But

22:10

digital computing sort of ran

22:10

away, growing rapidly in

22:14

performance following Moore's

22:14

law. And so analog classical

22:18

computers were sort of dropped.

22:18

But with quantum, we're not

22:20

really at that point yet. And so

22:20

mainly, I've been talking about

22:24

the digital ones because that's

22:24

where you get the focus on

22:26

attacking encryption and

22:26

blockchain and the like. Whereas

22:30

Kevin was talking about simulated annealing, which is something that a analog quantum

22:31

computer can do.

22:36

I'm so overwhelmed

22:36

by the brainpower that you guys

22:39

bring to the table here and just

22:39

to talk about this. I could sit

22:43

here the entire day but I know

22:43

that we all have other things to

22:47

do. In the next five years, any

22:47

major breakthroughs, anything

22:51

that would change the playing

22:51

field for a major company to

22:54

come out and say, we've done X,

22:54

and this has changed everything.

22:58

Google did make

22:58

such a claim in 2018, of so

23:02

called quantum supremacy, which

23:02

means that you've performed a

23:07

computation on a quantum

23:07

computer faster than any

23:10

classical computer could do. But

23:10

that claim is still being

23:14

disputed.

23:15

Quantum primacy or

23:15

quantum advantage, trying to

23:18

find a better noun than

23:18

supremacy right now for that,

23:21

but it will always be contested.

23:23

I read an article

23:23

this month about a group at a

23:27

high performance computing

23:27

center. He said like, well, when

23:29

we do with using this algorithm,

23:29

our result is faster than

23:32

Google's. And so...

23:34

Right? I mean, so

23:34

far, these examples of problems,

23:39

where a quantum computer seems

23:39

to be, you know, millions of

23:42

times faster than the classical

23:42

computer are basically sort of

23:45

almost like simulating physics

23:45

problems. So it's like, you're

23:48

Physics doing physics.

23:50

[laughter]

23:50

Of course, somewhat

23:50

faster. But yet, then you have

23:53

people come back with

23:53

conventional computers and try

23:55

and beat it.

23:56

I suspect we'll

23:56

see more claims of quantum

23:58

supremacy and more disputes

23:58

about it. I'm not sure if we'll

24:00

get a clear cut answer in the

24:00

next five years or not.

24:03

I think there's

24:03

always going to be this

24:05

empirical race and, and that's,

24:05

that's going to be fun to

24:09

watch...

24:09

Right, right.

24:10

..actually

24:10

benchmarking real quantum

24:12

computers on more and more

24:12

realistic problems. So those are

24:15

the headlines we're going to read over the few years, they're going to be dramatic.

24:19

The brain power in

24:19

the cafe today is in overdrive.

24:22

Thank you both so much for

24:22

joining us today. I've just been

24:25

so humbled just sitting here

24:25

with you both talking about this

24:28

awesome topic, and I hope that

24:28

our listeners have benefited

24:31

from it as well. I'm sure that

24:31

they have. Thank you both.

24:34

Thank you, Mike. It's so fun.

24:35

Thank you Mike.

24:36

Informatics Cafe

24:36

is presented by Informatics+,

24:39

the outreach arm of Northern

24:39

Kentucky University's College of

24:42

Informatics. Hosted by Mike

24:42

Nitardy. Produced and edited by

24:46

Chris Brewer. Music and recording

24:46

by Aaron Zlatkin. Recorded at the

24:50

Informatics Audio Studio in

24:50

Griffin Hall.