[extropy-chat] D-Wave premiere of 16 qubit processor

[John K Clark]

Robert Bradbury Wrote:

>Can anyone show me how quantum computers *or* AGI apply to the following
>problems:
> 1) Protein folding

Well, at the very least if it were to search through a database of N
possible shapes that the protein could fold into it would only take it on
average the square root of N steps to find the right one rather that N/2 as
in a conventional computer. However you could probably do better than that.
A protein in the process of folding is a quantum system and Feynman thought
a Quantum Computer would be especially good at simulating that sort of
thing; the protein in a sense does the quantum calculation in just a few
seconds so it knows how to fold up, Feynman thought there might be a way to
harness that wisdom and make a Universal Quantum Simulator. But that was 25
years ago, so far the most spectacular thing a real Quantum Computer has
done is factor the number 15.

  John K Clark