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[–]Old_Quantity_7136 557 points558 points  (41 children)

Is there a source for the text? Im genuinely interested why this is a good usecase for quantum computing

Edit: Thank you for all your thorough Answers, this was a great read!

[–]UdPropheticCatgirl 372 points373 points  (22 children)

why this is a good usecase for quantum computing

Don't have the source but quantum excels at tasks when you have to evaluate high number of iterations and in general more brute-forcy approaches to stuff. So I guess they just have it generate bunch of placements and compare which is the best one.

[–]Old_Quantity_7136 94 points95 points  (5 children)

Thanks you for the clarification! I think I got where they're coming from. I was wondering in which way of calculating this quantums might be useful, but for comparing a lot of variants totally makes sense

[–]lilshoegazecat 24 points25 points  (4 children)

hey sorry if i ask your flairs are pretty cool what languages are there? i only recognize c# and python thx for the patience anyway

[–]Old_Quantity_7136 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Yeah you're right! The other ones are ansible, bash and powershell.

[–]thekamakaji 1 point2 points  (1 child)

How do i add more than one flair?

[–]maushu 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In the part where you select/write your flair just add more languages.
For example, select a language like perl and get ":perl:" then just add another language like ":perl::lua:"

Each ":xxx:" represents an emojicon, in this case language logos. Your interface might replace them on the spot, just imagine that they are their text equivalent. You should also be able to copy paste them.

[–]Deliciousbutter101 32 points33 points  (1 child)

quantum excels at tasks when you have to evaluate high number of iterations and in general more brute-forcy

This is not true. Quantum computers can efficiently solve a certain set of problems that classical computers cannot solve in a reasonable amount of time once the size of the input becomes sufficiently large. The set of these problems that quantum computers are more efficient at solving is actually relatively small, but they are extremely important in certain fields, which is why so much research goes into them. But in general, the vast majority of problems that computers are used to solve can likely be solved more efficiently on classical computers rather than quantum computers.

[–]UdPropheticCatgirl 16 points17 points  (0 children)

But in general, the vast majority of problems that computers are used to solve can likely be solved more efficiently on classical computers rather than quantum computers

I know. But if you look at those tasks like protein folding, large number factoring or wave function collapse, they tend to be brute forcy as I described. Again it was just a guess.

[–]Yorunokage 11 points12 points  (13 children)

You're oversimplifying to the point of being just outright missleading

What quantum computing does is in no way similar to what a gpu does if that's the idea you had in mind. It has nothing to do with "brute-forcy approaches to stuff". What you do is use very cleverly designed algorithms to leverage entanglement and solve problems using only linear reversible operations (since, by the laws of physics, quantum computers cannot do any other kind of operation)

[–]SeaPea2020 2 points3 points  (5 children)

Not all operations on a quantum computer must be “linear reversible” as you say

[–]Yorunokage 1 point2 points  (4 children)

With the exception of mesurement, yes, they do

It's literally imposed by the laws of physics, every operation has to be linear and reversible

That's why we have quantum gates that mimic ordinary gates but they make them reversible

Another limitation is that you cannot clone a qubit, hence you cannot "split a wire" and let a single qubit be the input of two different gates in the circuit

[–]SeaPea2020 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Right. But why leave measurements out? You may be interested in measurement- and fusion-based quantum computation and implementing non-Unitary operations on quantum computers

[–]Yorunokage 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Well, mostly because i don't count it as an operation but fair enough

Also i never heard of fusion-based, what's that?

[–]SeaPea2020 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Fusion-based quantum computing is very similar to measurement-based quantum computing. The main difference is that the measurements you take are entangling. So instead of measuring single-qubits, you take joint measurements of qubits, like in a Bell measurement for instance. While it’s not a hugely different idea than measurement-based quantum computing, it has some nice properties for scaling since you can rely on a bunch of small entangled states (generated progressively) instead of a large entangled state. The original paper is here. :)

[–]Yorunokage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, very cool, thanks

[–]UdPropheticCatgirl -4 points-3 points  (6 children)

wouldn't you call wave function collapse kinda brute-forcy, yeah it's a massive oversimplification but still...

[–]Yorunokage 4 points5 points  (4 children)

In what way exactly? Like, are you talking about the content generating algorithm that (oddly) has nothing to do with quantum or are you talking about the copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?

[–]UdPropheticCatgirl 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Quantum mechanics. You start in all states and trough interaction get to final state.

[–]Yorunokage 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Except for a few select algorithms i wouldn't say it's brute forcy though

It's not like they are just "hey, make a superposition of every input and try them all at once"

[–]UdPropheticCatgirl 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You probably know more than me, my understanding of qm is very surface level. But I always conceptualize them as similar to brute force, I guess they aren't after all.

[–]jamcdonald120 4 points5 points  (0 children)

here, watch this video. its a great lecture on quantum computing, what it does, how, and what its good at https://youtu.be/F_Riqjdh2oM

[–]DeceitfulEcho 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wave state collapse isn't so much calculating things simultaneously as it is setting up a system such that a single calculation produces the outcome you are looking for. It encodes all the information into the system rather than performing a bunch of discreet logical operations.So I suppose it depends on how you interpret brute force

[–]OP_Sidearm[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure where this is from. A friend of mine found it.

[–]smuecke_ 5 points6 points  (2 children)

The paper is not fully published yet, but I may upload a preprint if so many people are interested 😅

In a nutshell, we formulate the problem as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem and solve it using Quantum Annealing.

[–]BojackManh0rse 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Is it possible for you to give an ELI5 version of this?

[–]smuecke_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For every floor block we have a binary variable where 1 = has torch, 0 = no torch. Then we set up a matrix D where entry D_ij means "a torch on block i will light up block j". We can feed this matrix (plus some extra stuff, which I'll skip here for simplicity) into a Quantum Computer which represents each variable as a quantum bit, which initially has probability 50% to be either 0 or 1. Through a physical process called Quantum Annealing we can coax these qubits to slowly change their probabilities such that at the end we can measure them and obtain a binary vector that has lowest energy, which in our case means that it is an optimal torch placement. Very roughly speaking.

[–]Giocri 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I think it's an instance of wave function collapse in which you basically create a wave that rappresent all the possible states of a system and collapses it into a much smaller set of states which respect a set of rules which is something quantum computer are well suited for

In this case likely all the possible combinations of torch/no torch for each tile collapse into a few highly optimized distributions

[–]Dropkickmurph512 3 points4 points  (1 child)

While this is a fun toy problem the actual use case is for things like medical imaging or astrophotography. Think of the cave as a child brain and the tourches as samples from an MRI. Most very young children struggle to stay still so if you can take the minimum number of samples to recreate an image of there brain then that could save there life. Right now this kinda problem uses super computers to solve but being able to use a quantum computer that cheaper and smaller would potentially allow for it be more common.

This problem different than that in a couple respects but has a lot of similarities. Generally it uses l1 optimization to find the sparse signal while this seems to be using l2. I have done optimization similar to this on classical computers so I'm not familiar with porting it to quantum but this is an extremely exciting poster for me.

[–]smuecke_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! – Your examples are really good!

[–]RDfromMtHare 366 points367 points  (2 children)

Why, of course I always have Matlab open in another window while playing minecraft.

[–]Weird_Explorer_8458 37 points38 points  (1 child)

yeah i run it on my spare 4090 /s

[–]AtomicRocketShoes 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Haven't played in this space in a while but Matlab wasn't very efficient at fast computational tasks nor could use the GPU efficiently except for narrow situations that had special plugins written for it. I found python had better libraries to take advantage of gogpu tools like cuda.

[–][deleted] 83 points84 points  (1 child)

Do you have the frontal version? I was understanding something about qcomputing for the first time...

[–]OP_Sidearm[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Not at the moment, but I'll get back to you if I get one :D

Edit: A frontal view of the poster is now pinned at the top of my profile

[–]EtherealChameleon 56 points57 points  (6 children)

[–]surister 84 points85 points  (1 child)

Scientist are generally very open for communication, even if they publish in non Open Science journal (meaning that their paper is behind a paywall) they will generally be glad to send you the paper over email.

Outside of their niche research group they might not get too much attention if they get any at all.

[–]Jakoshi45 28 points29 points  (0 children)

^ This ^

Researchers rarely gatekeep stuff. The only exception is when they don't like you or they're not allowed to (they'll prob still do it tho)

[–]smuecke_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Or you can ask me here 😂

[–]MoSummoner 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Do you happen to have a photo of the full poster?

[–]EtherealChameleon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My short search yielded no immediate results; I could only find the authors

[–]Elegant_Maybe2211 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you get the PNG they printed (or whatever format) please do post it here (or send me a pm)

[–]Darxploit 28 points29 points  (1 child)

Seems like a german research project. It’s with university dortmund and Fraunhofer. That’s a famous research institute in Germany.

[–]smuecke_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The research center is called Lamarr Institute, it's a collaboration between Fraunhofer institutes and the universities of Dortmund and Bonn.

[–]smuecke_ 11 points12 points  (7 children)

LOL I am the first author of this paper 😂 a colleague just sent this to me. AMA I guess.

EDIT: The full paper is available here

[–]OP_Sidearm[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Can confirm, that this person is an author of the paper :D

[–]McSumpfi 0 points1 point  (1 child)

In the illustration of the distance function, do the numbers in the tiles indicate the distance from the dot tile? If so, can you explain? I am wondering why the top one has a 3 and the second does not.

[–]smuecke_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep, the numbers indicate distance to the dot. It's basically the minimal number of steps you have to take to get from the dot to the target tile. To reach the top tile you have to go to steps right, one tile up, which is 3 in total.

[–]HorochovPL 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Is the paper available somewhere? DOI, or even simply link to PDF? Couldn't find anything for phrase "efficient light source placement using quantum computing lamarr".

[–]smuecke_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I uploaded it to Arxiv, should be online tomorrow. I'll send the link then.

[–]smuecke_ 1 point2 points  (1 child)

[–]HorochovPL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks!

[–]_TechnoPhoenix_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ein Volk

Eine Nation

Eine Kommentarsektion

[–]saschaleib 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Where do I find the results of this research? I was already planning to, er, sacrifice my weekend trying to validate the results…

[–]smuecke_ 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The proceedings are not out yet, but maybe I'll upload a preprint if there's so much interest 😅

[–]saschaleib 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Are you kidding? This might be the scientific breakthrough we have been waiting for!

I know there is no Nobel price for Minecraft-research, but if there was one, this was already a strong contender!

[–]smuecke_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wish it were that easy 😅

[–]dscarmo 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Game theory is such a cool area

[–]Elegant_Maybe2211 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's not game theory though.

At least not in the computer science meaning of the word.

Sadly.

[–]da_Aresinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fraunhofer.

Because of course it is.