But I think it’ll be sold like “this is gonna instantly transform business overnight”
Tbf, and to my understanding, quantum computers will break current encryption algorithms, so it kind of will transform business overnight, just maybe not in the way these people are selling.
The encryption-scares don’t really bother me. It’s as if everyone thinks quantum computers will come of age but for some reason quantum encryption won’t equally scale up to match it?
Like, of course current encryption methods are at risk, they aren’t designed to match quantum computing and any that would, while it would be nice if it also performed on current PC’s… it wouldn’t need to in the longrun.
I do agree that the in-between time of “Oh shit, a quantum computer was invented” and “Ta-da! Encryption that chokes QC!” is a bit scary. Here’s hoping most devs take measures and precautions during the first few warning-shot hours lol.
That’s how it’s been explained to me by laymen many many times. Just casually (ish, I have a math degree) looking at the math, chatting with a friend who is a quantum physicist, being involved with computers, etc I find that Grover’s Algorithm is not at all capable of something like that. I’m not sure there’s anything better in terms of breaking encryption
Grover’s algorithm could brute-force a 128-bit symmetric cryptographic key in roughly 264 iterations, or a 256-bit key in roughly 2128 iterations. It may not be the case that Grover’s algorithm poses a significantly increased risk to encryption over existing classical algorithms, however.[4]
I am stoked for what it could do for protein folding, or other heavy simulation work, but in terms of proper encryption I don’t believe it actually will change much.
Also the largest number ever factorized on a quantum computer (not simulated) is like 30. So this is like 1950’s level of computing(in terms of number of transistors vs qbits) and we’re 20-30 years of incremental change away from really threatening encryption
That’s fair, Shor’s algorithm would probably break a bunch of older encryption. It’s a little further out of reach, in terms of feasibility but who knows how fast it could speed up
Tbf, and to my understanding, quantum computers will break current encryption algorithms, so it kind of will transform business overnight, just maybe not in the way these people are selling.
The encryption-scares don’t really bother me. It’s as if everyone thinks quantum computers will come of age but for some reason quantum encryption won’t equally scale up to match it?
Like, of course current encryption methods are at risk, they aren’t designed to match quantum computing and any that would, while it would be nice if it also performed on current PC’s… it wouldn’t need to in the longrun.
I do agree that the in-between time of “Oh shit, a quantum computer was invented” and “Ta-da! Encryption that chokes QC!” is a bit scary. Here’s hoping most devs take measures and precautions during the first few warning-shot hours lol.
That’s how it’s been explained to me by laymen many many times. Just casually (ish, I have a math degree) looking at the math, chatting with a friend who is a quantum physicist, being involved with computers, etc I find that Grover’s Algorithm is not at all capable of something like that. I’m not sure there’s anything better in terms of breaking encryption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover's_algorithm
I am stoked for what it could do for protein folding, or other heavy simulation work, but in terms of proper encryption I don’t believe it actually will change much.
The typical example is Shor’s algorithm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm
It allows to efficiently find the prime factors of an integer - a problem without a known polynomial algorithm on a classical computer.
This would directly break RSA encryption, as it relies on factorisation being difficult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_cryptosystem
However, there are encryption algorithms that are considered safe even against a quantum computer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
Also the largest number ever factorized on a quantum computer (not simulated) is like 30. So this is like 1950’s level of computing(in terms of number of transistors vs qbits) and we’re 20-30 years of incremental change away from really threatening encryption
That’s fair, Shor’s algorithm would probably break a bunch of older encryption. It’s a little further out of reach, in terms of feasibility but who knows how fast it could speed up
So basically anything not using RSA is fine, which is probably everything these days.