Quantum computing

tl;dr: What has happened in quantum computing over the years.

A history

In 2001, Vandersypen et al. claimed an “experimental realization” of Shor’s quantum factoring algorithm¹. Their results demonstrate feasibility of building very small, highly specialized quantum circuits. Specifically, they show a quantum circuit tailored for factoring 15, but in designing this circuit they leveraged knowledge of its factorizaton (i.e., $3\times5 = 15$). Naturally, the relevance of these results has been questioned, most notably by Smolin et al.² who write:

While there is no objection to having a classical compiler help design a quantum circuit (indeed, probably all quantum computers will function in this way), it is not legitimate for a compiler to know the answer to the problem being solved. To even call such a procedure compilation is an abuse of language.

Others, have been less gentle and mocked this kind of “experimental realization”³.

Google’s results: Willow, error-correction, new ECDLP algorithm. Oratomic’s result. This result⁴. Craig Gidney’s post and his past paper on Shor.

References

For cited works, see below 👇👇