Era of quantum computers is here!

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

Now, the question is, when do we get hold of one of these things to RENDER on??? :smile:

2

Hello :slight_smile:

Era of quantum computers is here ! ahah I feel like we hear about this sentence every time someone do a move in quantum computers, but it’s never “really” here ^^
By the way, the first company to reach Quantum Supremacy, Google or other, I think they would not say it, as they would be able to break any password, and own the Internet… Even the NSA is clearer and more transparent on their work on Quantum Computing, naming their project “Owning the Net” ^^

By the way, Quantum Computing is known to be much faster than normal computers on specific search tasks like breaking a n-bits long password (as the difficulty would be proportional to n, and not exponential).
For now even a Quantum Computer would not be any faster for our rendering tasks :sweat_smile:
Unless people start to work on Quantum Rendering but I think for now it would be too early, and a waiste of money :stuck_out_tongue:

See you :slight_smile: ++
Tricotou

1 Like
3

Er - how do you figure THAT? :slight_smile:

Isn’t rendering one of the PRIME uses for high-end computing power??

…and isn’t that what GOOGLE Stadia IS, or will be, in the first place?? :slight_smile:

4

it already got debunked by ibm. it took their summit supercomputer 2,5 days instead of 10000 years.

5

Yeah I agree, but I speak about the fact that Quantum Computing is not really here, so you could not test it. Of course when every one will have a Quantum Computer at home it will be usefull, but here, no developper really has a quantum computer…
It would be like working on CUDA development, and GPU coding for Cycles, before the birth of GPUs ^^ It would have been totally crazy as totaly impossible to “test” the code in real conditions :stuck_out_tongue:

6

I meant REMOTE rendering, ie. “cloud”, although that word probably doesn’t apply any more here…

7

<<It would be like working on CUDA development, and GPU coding for Cycles, before the birth of GPUs ^^ It would have been totally crazy as totaly impossible to “test” the code in real conditions>>

Well! Maybe not so crazy if one read this paper on programming quantum computers from Google… https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-quantum-programming-a19aa0b923a9

8

Don’t buy into the hype. We are a VERY long way from quantum personal computers (or even general public access). First off, they are huge, requiring large super cooled vacuum chambers, and a lot of energy to run. Then once the basics are figured out, the really long process of miniaturization will begin. Then hardware vendors will need to learn how it all works so they can start building components, while others learn the machine code. A new operating system architecture will need to be developed, and probably new programming languages for that architecture. Then programmers need to learn that and start developing software for it. Fast forward through all that, and we’re finally at the point when only the super rich can afford it, or maybe you’d be able to rent cycles on one.

As of now, we can basically just make qubits go beep and boop…

EDIT … Or I guess also beepboop :smile:

1 Like
9

True, we are quite away from personal quantum computers and the ones in use today are not suitable for rendering.
But one can access them publicly (just sign up with IBM Q) and get a taste of it.

There are some specific real world applications where large companies try to use them. The ones commercially available from D-Wave are made for complex optimization problems. VW uses one for traffic control or at Wall Street for portfolio optimization in finance. Of course these can be done on conventional computer as well. To solve general large, real world applications the number of qbits needs to be orders of magnitudes higher, something unfeasible with the technology currently used by Google, IBM or D-Wave.

If anyone wants to try out programming them, IBM and Microsoft have Python and F# based high level toolboxes. E.g. https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/Qiskit/qiskit-tutorials/blob/master/qiskit/1_start_here.ipynb
With IBM you can even test run your own programs on a real quantum computer.

Programming a quantum computer is quite different from programming a pc. One needs to understand the underlying hardware and program on gate-level with one and 2 qubit operations.
You can simulate this on a normal pc (for a low number of qubits) and give it a try.

1 Like
10

Yeah, that’s what I mean about the hype train. Don’t get me wrong, the technology is super cool and I can’t wait to see where it is 10, 20, 40 years from now. But anything we’re doing with it now is just a parlor trick (and maybe a little bit of Alan Turing levels of excitement). :slight_smile:

I did not know about the IBM Q thing though. That’s pretty cool!

11

believe me that the era of quantum computing is quite far off, especially for consumers.

1 Like
12

Here is a video from SIGGRAPH 2016 by Eric Johnston (Arnold Renderer)
He talks about Quantum Supersampling - made me finally understand this whole quantum thing a bit better - and yes - it will and can be used for rendering (eventually… )

1 Like
13

It’s very cool and all, but I would say keep expectations realistic until we have the first commercial quantum computers available on the market. The first markets that will gain access to these are the military and scientific divisions of various governments, so it will not immediately trickle down to consumers. I kind of doubt we’ll see quantum computering hitting the commercial scene for many years even once they manage to make a completely functional version.

15

You sound like you know what you’re talking about - does this mean everything we know about software dev till now, the last 50 or more years or so, are now over? Obsolete?

16

Qcomputers will ship somewhere around 2027. We are still some years behind. We’re the regular public. Also: Algorythms to define quantum states are still being developed. I listened to a lot of scientific talks past this week on the latest appilcations for QComputers (human genoma, climate changes, accurate representation of real world chemical reactions with new chemical elements), rendering is not on their prios. We can shut this topic now.

17

I did some work on a feasible implementation of a scalable qbit system, the hardware side so to speak.
All the know how of software development is of course not obsolete. You can see that (links above) one can emulate them on a PC with current software. But for developing new algorithms, which are faster on quantum computer than classical ones, quite some more work and new concepts are needed.