The documents distributed by this server have been provided by the
contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of
scholarly and technical work on a noncommercial basis. Copyright and all
rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright
holders, notwithstanding that they have offered their works here
electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this
information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each
author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit
permission of the copyright holder.
Disentangling hype from practicality: On realistically achieving quantum advantage
(Vol 66, Nr. 5, In Communications of the ACM, pages 82-87, ACM, May 2023)
Abstract
Quantum computers offer a new paradigm of computing with the potential to vastly outperform any imagineable classical computer. This has caused a gold rush towards new quantum algorithms and hardware. In light of the growing expectations and hype surrounding quantum computing we ask the question which are the promising applications to realize quantum advantage. We argue that small data problems and quantum algorithms with super-quadratic speedups are essential to make quantum computers useful in practice. With these guidelines one can separate promising applications for quantum computing from those where classical solutions should be pursued. While most of the proposed quantum algorithms and applications do not achieve the necessary speedups to be considered practical, we already see a huge potential in material science and chemistry. We expect further applications to be developed based on our guidelines.
Documents
download article:
Recorded talk (best effort)
BibTeX
@article{cacm-quantum-hype, author={Torsten Hoefler and Thomas Häner and Matthias Troyer}, title={{Disentangling hype from practicality: On realistically achieving quantum advantage}}, year={2023}, month={5}, pages={82-87}, volume={66}, number={5}, booktitle={Communications of the ACM}, publisher={ACM}, }
