The Cloud Atlas to Real Quantum Computing
July 1, 2017
Grazed from Web. Author: Editorial Staff.
A funny thing happened on the way to quantum computing: Unlike other major shifts in classic computing before it, it begins — not ends — with The Cloud. That’s because quantum computers today may be more like “physics experiments in a can” … Unless you can use software, not just as cloud infrastructure for accessing this computing power commercially but for also building the killer app (what will it be?) on top of it.
With quantum virtual machines and special languages for connecting and trading off classic and quantum computing, companies and developers may be able to get ahead before it surprises them. Or better yet, just use it for what they want and need. Ok, sounds great. Only the old rules don’t all apply: You have to fundamentally rethink algorithms for quantum computing, just as with previous waves of high-performance computing before it — from CPU to GPU to TPU and now to QPU…
Because as chips evolve, so do algorithms, and vice versa, in an iterative, not unidirectional way. But it’s not just a chicken-egg question of which came first (the algorithm or the specialized hardware for running it) — the answer itself involves herding chickens: “You’re trying to get all of these independent processes to run and cooperate with each other to produce an answer and do so in a way that was faster” than the other way before it…
Read more from the source @ https://a16z.com/2017/06/30/engineering-quantum-computing-today/