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Richard Borcherds is a British mathematician at Berkeley, who won the 1998 Fields Medal for the proof of the monstrous moonshine conjecture among many other contributions. A couple months ago, Borcherds posted on YouTube a
self-described “rant” about quantum computing, which was recently making the rounds on Facebook and which I found highly entertaining.
Borcherds points out that the term “quantum supremacy” means only that quantum computers can outperform existing classical computers on
some benchmark, which can be chosen to show maximum advantage for the quantum computer. He allows that BosonSampling could have some value, for example in calibrating quantum computers or in comparing one quantum computer to another, but he decries the popular conflation of quantum supremacy with the actual construction of a scalable quantum computer able (for example) to run Shor’s algorithm to break RSA.
As China Leads Quantum Computing Race, U.S. Spies Plan for a World with Fewer Secrets
On 12/14/20 at 5:00 AM EST
As China leads in the race to quantum computing edge, US spies plan for a world with few secrets.
Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty
Back in 1994, when quantum computers existed only as so much chalk on a blackboard, mathematician Peter Shor invented what may soon prove to be their killer app.
Shor trained his efforts on a calculation called factoring, which ordinarily nobody but a mathematician would care about, except it just happens to be an Achilles heel of the internet. If someone were to invent a computer that could perform this operation quickly, messages that are currently hidden from hackers, terrorists, military adversaries, governments and competitors would be as easy to read as a Stephen King novel.