Ancient history: DEF CON 9 Talk on Quantum Computers

Sunday, November 21, 2021 

I wrote a little email screed to a friend about the risks to bitcoin from advances in quantum computing and was reminded of a paper I presented at DEF CON 9 back in 2001 on Quantum Computing, back then limited to 8 qubits.

The remotely relevant bit was what I really hope someone (other than me) will call “Gessel’s law” (after Moore’s law: P=2(y/1.5)) on the power of quantum computing, at least once, as I believe it may have been the first presentation of the formulation: P=22(y/2)

How did my predictions hold up over the last 20 years?

I estimated a crossover within about 10 years, or 2011.  D-Wave claimed to offer a quantum computer 15x faster than a classical computer in 2015, 3-4 years later than I predicted.  Google claimed quantum supremacy in 2019.

In 2020, D-Wave claimed to have a quantum computer with 5,000 qubits, slightly ahead of my prediction of 4,096 by 2021 back in 2001.

Posted at 16:37:44 GMT-0700

Category: EventsPrivacySecurityTechnology