On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 03:40:38PM +0000, Mark Lawrence wrote: > On 15/12/2013 04:55, William Ray Wing wrote:
> >Well, as it turns out, there actually *IS* a commercially available > >quantum computer on the market today. It is built by a Canadian company > >"D-Wave Systems" and early prototypes have been bought by companies like > >Google and Lockeed Martin and some Government labs. Unfortunately, it > >isn't clear whether or not it is living up to expectations… > > > >You can read a summary and sort of intro here: > >http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/dwaves-year-of-computing-dangerously > > > >-Bill > > > > Are you saying that it can't do list comprehensions, recursive functions > and floating point arithmetic correctly? Neither William nor the article say anything about D-Wave's quantum computer being unable to do list comprehensions, recursive functions or floating point arithmentic correctly. I'm not an expert on quantum computing, but the impression that I get is that trying to use a quantum computer for calculating fundamentally classical operations like floating point, or serial calculations like list comprehensions, would be rather like somebody being shown a "horseless carriage" early in the 20th century and asking "So, how do I get it to trot?" The point of an automobile is to get from A to B, not to duplicate the motion of a horse, and likewise the point of a quantum computer is to solve problems, not to duplicate the exact same algorithms that you would use on classical computers. But I could be wrong. -- Steven _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor