The Promise of Quantum Computing

Quantum computing holds tremendous promise, but I lament how much of it remains theoretical and mathematical. It’s easy to find algorithms and formulae, but it’s incredibly challenging to find circuits with which you could actually run experiments.

The most extreme example seems to be Quantum Machine Learning. I’ve heard absolutely incredible things about what can be done, but I’ll be darned if I can find anything experimental about it. And, I’ve been looking.

One recent paper, for example, referenced QRAM, or Quantum Random Access Memory. To my knowledge, QRAM doesn’t exist yet. Therefore, I can’t draw anything actionable from that paper.

Other papers describe all sorts of powerful, high-dimensional calculations. You can find lectures about these on YouTube, as well. Meanwhile, I’m scrutinizing for anything that looks like a buildable circuit: QASM, Qiskit, or anything testable.

And, how about the claims that I can map tremendous amounts of data to remarkably few qubits? I still haven’t found an actual demonstration of this on any scale.

Even in regard to the paper I’ve been writing, there are a lot of papers out there with a plethora of theories and math. My approach, on the other hand, is to try and see what is actually possible today, with current technology.