[ExI] Moore's Law

[John Clark]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013  Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:

> Lots of "maybes", Mr Clark. It is hard to build any reasonable prediction
> on that, if you ask me.
>

Yeah guilty as charged, but in my own defense the fact is that predicting
is hard, especially the future.

> Yes, there are some research saying QC will not solve all that many
> problems, only some of them it will solve
> faster. They don't say what kind of faster, AFAIK.
>

We already know that Quantum Computers could factor numbers faster than a
conventional computer, and find information in a list faster, and far more
important it could simulate a quantum system much much faster, like
figuring out what sequence of amino acids you'd need to fold up and form a
3D protein of a particular shape. We'll probably find that lots of other
things that would be faster too especially highly parallel things, and most
physical processes are highly parallel.

>> There was even a article on the most radical sort of Quantum computer, a
>> Topological Quantum Computer using non-Abelian pseudo-particles, and even
>> here they report "substantial progress in this field".
>>
>
> > I understand it was theoretical breakthrough?
>

Yes, in fact nobody has even proved conclusively that non-Abelian
pseudo-particles even exist, although the evidence that they do keeps
increasing. And if they do exist that would be huge because they would be
far less susceptible to quantum decoherence than normal particles and so
would be the ideal thing to use in making a Quantum Computer. I think that
a working Quantum Computer is the only thing that might rival
Nanotechnology in revolutionizing the world.

  John K Clark
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