So how many gates are we talking to factor some "cryptographically useful" number? Is there some pathway that makes quantum computers useful this century?
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That is a hard question to answer for two reasons. First, there is no bright line that delineates "cryptographically useful". And second, the exact design of a QC that could do such a calculation is not yet known. It's kind of like trying to estimate how many traditional gates would be needed to build a "semantically useful" neural network back in 1985.
But the answer is almost certainly in the millions.
[UPDATE] There is a third reason this is hard to predict: for quantum error correction, there is a tradeoff between the error rate in the raw qbit and the number of gates needed to build a reliable error-corrected virtual qbit. The lower the error rate in the raw qbit, the fewer gates are needed. And there is no way to know at this point what kind of raw error rates can be achieved.
> Is there some pathway that makes quantum computers useful this century?
This century has 75 years left in it, and that is an eternity in tech-time. 75 years ago the state of the art in classical computers was (I'll be generous here) the Univac [1]. Figuring out how much less powerful it was than a modern computer makes an interesting exercise, especially if you do it in terms of ops/watt. I haven't done the math, but it's many, many, many orders of magnitude. If the same progress can be achieved in quantum computing, then pre-quantum encryption is definitely toast by 2100. And it pretty much took only one breakthrough, the transistor, to achieve the improvement in classical computing that we enjoy today. We still don't have the equivalent of that for QC, but who knows when or if it will happen. Everything seems impossible until someone figures it out for the first time.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I#Technical_description
> This century has 75 years left in it, and that is an eternity in tech-time.
As a comparison, we went from first heavier than air flight to man walking on the moon in only 66 years.
Yet it has been 53 years since we have been able to send a manned mission to the moon . No other program has or likely to come close in the next 13 years including the current US one. By 2038 the moon landings would be closer to Wright brothers than future us.
The curve of progress is only smooth and exponential when you squint hard .
It is a narrow few decades of exponential growth hardly can reasonably be expected to last for 100+ years .
It is for the same reason you cannot keep doubling grains on a chess board just because you did it 10-20 steps quickly.
Fusion power, quantum computing are all always two decades away for a reason despite the money being spent . AI has gone through 3-4 golden ages in living memory and yet too many keep believing this one would last.
Reality is when the conditions are right, I.e. all the ground work has been done for decades or centuries before there can be rapid innovation for a short(few decades at best) time
The Chinese are planning manned lunar landings in 2029-2030, and this is not a pipe dream, they've been systematically working at this for several decades now. They have already completed 6 out of 8 preparatory missions plus placed comms satellites in lunar orbit, and the final two are scheduled for 2026 and 2028.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...
Perhaps milestones are being set to be competing with Artemis. When NASA gets delayed or reduced in scope, CNSA might reset to more achievable date.
That is just engineering risk on dates, there are other class of risks in geopolitics or economics etc.
Bottom line I am skeptical that a successful landing and return can be attempted in 2030. 2035 is a more realistic target I think.