Single Nvidia GPU speeds past the physics-straining might of a quantum computer
- Reference: 1683111610
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/03/quantum_reality_check/
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Drug discovery, material sciences, scheduling, traffic congestion, supply chain, and weather forecasting are all commonly cited applications that vendors say quantum computing well suited.
But in a [1]paper published in the journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, Torsten Hoefler, director of the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory, alongside former Microsoft researcher Thomas Häner, and Microsoft's Matthias Troyer concluded that, short of exceptional improvements in hardware and software, even future quantum systems are unlikely to achieve practical speeds in many of these workloads.
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For a quantum system to be worthwhile, it needs to be able to perform a task faster than a conventional system, and to test this, the team pitted a hypothetical quantum system with 10,000 error-correcting qubits, or about a million physical qubits, against a classical computer equipped with a single Nvidia A100 GPU.
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To be clear, no such quantum system exists today. The most advanced quantum computers currently available top out at a few hundred physical qubits. IBM's Osprey system, for instance, [5]packs 433 qubits. And while IBM says it's on track to deliver a 4,158-qubit system in 2025, even that's well short of the system envisioned by Hoefler and his co-authors. On the flip side, as high-performance computing (HPC) systems go, the conventional system considered in this paper is positively anemic.
"For our analysis, we set a break-even point of two weeks, meaning a quantum computer should be able to perform better than a classical computer on problems that would take a quantum computer no more than two weeks to solve," Troyer explained in a [6]blog post published Monday.
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The comparison, according to the authors, revealed a glaring problem with most quantum algorithms today. A quadratic speedup, like that enabled by Grover's algorithm, isn't insufficient to achieve an advantage over conventional systems. Instead, "super-quadratic or ideally exponential speedups" are needed.
[8]You can cross 'Quantum computers to smash crypto' off your list of existential fears for 30 years
[9]Quantum computing: Hype or reality? OVH says businesses would be better off prepared
[10]India gives itself a mission to develop a 1000-qubit quantum computer in just eight years
[11]Amazon: Diamonds are a quantum network's best friend
That's not the only problem facing quantum architectures. Input and output (I/O) bandwidth is another limiting factor.
"Our research revealed that applications that rely on large datasets are better served by classical computing, because the bandwidth is too low on quantum systems to allow for applications such as searching databases or training machine learning models on large datasets," Troyer explained.
He added that this means that workloads like drug design, protein folding, as well as weather and climate prediction are better suited to conventional workloads, given the current state of the tech.
This doesn't mean that quantum computing is worthless, it simply means that, at least for the foreseeable future, the applications for quantum systems are likely to be narrower than the marketers would have you believe.
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"Generally, quantum computers will be practical for 'big compute' problems on small data, not big data problems," the researchers wrote.
One such workload likely to benefit from quantum systems are chemical and material sciences. This is because many of these workloads rely on relatively small datasets.
"If quantum computers only benefited chemistry and material science, that would be enough," Troyer emphasized. "Many problems facing the world today boil down to chemistry and material science problems. Better and more efficient electric vehicles rely on finding better battery chemistries. More effective and targeted cancer drugs rely on computational biochemistry."
Cryptoanalysis using Shor's algorithm presents similar challenges, the researchers note. However, not every algorithm capable of an exponential speedup is necessarily well suited to quantum systems. The team notes that while linear algebra has an exponential speed up, this is negated by I/O bottlenecks as soon as the matrix is loaded into memory.
"These considerations help with separating hype from practicality in the search for quantum applications and can guide algorithmic developments," the paper reads. "Our analysis shows it is necessary for the community to focus on super-quadratic speeds, ideally exponential speedups, and one needs to carefully consider I/O bottlenecks." ®
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[1] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/5/272276-disentangling-hype-from-practicality-on-realistically-achieving-quantum-advantage/fulltext
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/ibm_and_fujitsu_detail_quantum/
[6] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum/2023/05/01/quantum-advantage-hope-and-hype/
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/26/quantum_breaking_encryption_rsa/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/25/quantum_hype_or_reality/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/india_quantum_mission/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/06/amazon_quantum_networks_diamonds/
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[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Weather forecasting
Protein folding is a way off too. [1]This preprint suggests that what takes a few days on a "conventional computer" would take decades or millennia on today's quantum computers.
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.09690.pdf
Re: Weather forecasting is a non-starter application for quantum computers.
In general, yes. But there may be some parts of the many various types of computation going on in a weather simulation that could benefit, and be done faster - e.g. Fourier transforms. But it's not so clear to me how much of an overall speedup this could give, ... you'd have to ask a weather simulator :-)
Why does weather forecasting keep being peddled out as a likely application for QC?
Because ChatGPT has suggested it's the most effective way to source investment ?
This doesn't mean that quantum computing is worthless, it simply means that, at least for the foreseeable future, the applications for quantum systems are likely to be narrower than the marketers would have you believe.
Well given that a standard off the shelf graphics card can outrun a quantum computer now doesn't mean that it always will in the future. Assuming that people are willing to spend billions on it, as opposed to millions (or less) buying off the shelf technology.
Unless quantum computing can get very much faster, very quickly, I don't see it having a commercial future. It'll be something someone picks up again in twenty years and goes "hey this was a cool idea" and tries to revive it.
I watched the documentary on the Fyre festival over the weekend, and right now quantum computing feels like the shiny marketing is out there, and the tickets went on sale, we're just waiting for the buyers to be disappointed.
So basically, it's like quantum computers are still back in the ISA days while binary computers are entering the NVMe era. Meaning quantum computer designers would get more bang for their buck by working on these bottlenecks than just throwing qubits at the problem. Sort of like classical computers learned back in the days when AMD and Intel were racing to have the fastest CPU in terms of raw MHz or GHz, IPC efficiency of the CPU be damned or even considerations about how the old IDE bus couldn't move data around anywhere near fast enough and the CPU would spend a great deal of its life in the idle loop. Hopefully that is the lesson that quantum computer builders take away from this.
As you might expect, this is the main focus of current research already, and even then orgs are not at all saying these things will replace binary compute. Rather they will be accelerators for certain classes of problems.
This is not new, and modern graphics architecture has roots in attempts to harness vector machines for large scale processes.
The announcement reeks of an attempt to convince share holders that Microsoft's investments are going in the right direction rather than any real analysis.
"no more than two weeks to solve"
Um, sorry, but isn't quantum computing supposed to be instantaneous ?
With all possible results instead of just one ?
We've been told that (current) encryption would be literally destroyed by a quantum computer. The NSA would be swimming in decrypted SMSs and emails.
And now it takes two weeks ?
The more time goes by, the less I understand quantum computing.
And now it's useless anyway.
Re: Um, sorry, but isn't quantum computing supposed to be instantaneous ?
No, it isn't instantaneous. I might imagine, I suppose, that some reporting might have given that impression, but none of the actual physics ever has.
Narrow optics
Better and more efficient electric vehicles rely on finding better battery chemistries
This sentence displays a fixed mindset - because it ignores everything that is not a battery. The biggest factor in making electric vehicles practical is the development of really efficient motors. After that there is the control and regeneration systems that eke out every last joule. The developments in battery design while important is minor compared to the gains from everything else.
So one has to ask has the author been equally blinkered when looking at the advantages quantum computing might offer in time?
Personally I think if anything he was over optimistic and quantum computing when it finally happens will be restricted to some very narrow fields but I'm no expert so feel free to ignore my opinions on this subject - it's really too early to tell and various problems look tricky to solve.
Weather forecasting
Weather forecasting is a non-starter application for quantum computers. It’s a chaotic system. Quantum computers cannot handle chaotic systems.
In addition, you have to be very specific about what you are asking the QC you do. What would you ask it? “Will it rain” ? Good luck coming up with a QC algorithm for that. Actually, don’t bother - it won’t work (see “chaotic system” above)
Why does weather forecasting keep being peddled out as a likely application for QC?