Lodewijk andré de la porte <l@odewijk.nl> wrote:

> The massive quantum computer has unpredictable power consumption.

Lee Azzarello <lee@guardianproject.info> wrote:

> I guess inventing new math to break crypto has some physics problems.


these comments has me contemplating what a large-scale networked quantum computer installation would involve.. and to what extent the image of racks of servers may note correlate with the computing technology inside the boxes, or in some percentage of the data centre.

in other words- how would a quantum installation differ from the classical computer systems of the last many decades- would they be of yet another smaller scale or would an installation inherently be enormous. what if the data centre was all quantum computing in terms of the data throughput - do these numbers correlate or are different approaches to security calculations required

is it possible that a 'computer within a computer' could exist, such that a quantum chip could be embedded and use a classical electronic based system, that is, some form of stealth or hidden computing that occurs in a parallel hidden framework, including for networking data. could ethernet or fibre channel be used or would it need to be different, say tuned resonant circuits computing in other dimensionality.

would such an installation be possible and be manageable via secondary, zoned interface, and not noticeable, especially if sealed into processors or chips and thus tamper- and inspection-proof.  to what extent may the data centre be a Spruce Goose or Glomar Explorer, providing conventional 'economies-of-scale' development for computing that is beyond this present-day technological situation.

the idea that the NSA would field an early quantum computer in such a situation seems unlikely. especially if considering the scale issue whereby early computing starts large and shrinks down, thus ENIAC or other room or warehouse sized earlier computer installations of newly developing technology eventually moving into transistor and integrated circuit (IC) fabrications, personal computing, server boxes instead of tape-storage mainframes, and now cellphones compared to peak computing power thirty or more years earlier.

would quantum computers require different storage technology, for instance, or could they rely on today's storage- or would it need to be formatted differently. and given massive parallelism and the nature of supercomputers to be custom programmed and time-shared by various projects, could such a quantum device exist nested in another system yet be linked in parallel to make a massive installation, and then be called upon for particular vexing tasks versus number crunching or data processing that can effectively be managed via existing tech, such as voice recognition or text analysis in particular modeling approaches.

i wonder if - and perhaps it is entirely wrong-minded - in some way -- besides the issue of batteries as a limit upon scale and usability of computing resources, that if the electron itself is a false-limit and there could be smaller particle flows harnessed via destabilizing the natural equilibrium and thus the imbalance forces movement of charge at a smaller scale or within a different kind of circuitry that could be nested inside a larger electronic installation. what if a quantum computer would be equivalent to a tiny unmarked IC on a circuitboard and yet would it require access to the same components of existing computer architectures today or could it operate beyond or outside this, say as a connectable linked quantum processor networked into parallelism, for calculations alone.

would a quantum computer installation be humongous or could a sufficiently developed (say, over the last 50 years) quantum computer be the size of a PC today yet wield teraflop or beyond capacity. what would be a telltale sign of such computing. could it involve strange or aberrant electronic or electrical interference or events, is it possible that the flow of electrons may interfere with such computation or that such a computer may need to be isolated else it could force strange current backwards, beyond diode barricades even, given weirdness of the physics. would the power draw be the same or more or less. would existing parallel software approaches even be viable within such a context or is it reliant upon assumptions that no longer apply if one or more foundations of existing computer architectures are changed or made unnecessary. is a quantum computer only quantum in some senses, such as processing, and this stops at I/O or other supposed 'motherboard' interactions, or would the entire circuit be changed. could there be hybrids where both co-exist, or like questioned, if one computing system could be embedded within another, via protected boundary?  (this is already assumed for tech today, though seemingly in the same realm of technology in the mundane sense, like masquerade processing or other mystery functionality)

the assumption i think is most likely if such a scenario existed would be that any such quantum technology would be highly advanced from the rudimentary first stages it exists today in the commercial realm, and would be possible to deploy and crack crypto en masse and that there is not symmetry between AES256 and this giant installation- built just for that- and instead whatever capacity were to exist it would be so far beyond the requirements of existing crypto as to provide decades of headroom for more data crunching atop what exists to be parsed and analyzed, catalogued, and stored in terms of record keeping. that it would involve 'big picture' data modeling of the state itself in its many and various dimensions as they are correlated- or perhaps that is only the domain of the underground data centres, who knows.

in other words: can the assumption be made that the image of rows upon rows of computing servers equal 'traditional computing power' or might they function as the signage for conventional technology when stealth computing infrastructure could be within the mystery boxes networked and sparking. is it conventional for such feedback upon large scale installations or could such aberrations or anomalies indicate other possibilities, as commented. is there some truth to the irreverence, in that would anyone in the public know or be able to know, or even in government or private service - unless vetted and kept out of the mainstream, and its venue of conventional technological development.

could quantum computing exist over the existing internet and be unrecognized or would it require its own parallel infrastructure. would the equivalent of a non-stealth advanced quantum computer installation be at the same scale or, if unhidden, potentially much smaller, else indicate anything if the existing installation was entirely or a large percentage of quantum computers. what would it mean for crypto, for instance. would emissions or anything else provide indication of quantum versus traditional computing architectures, via escaped signature forms of data structuring tuned into remotely. what would it mean, otherwise.

(i put these things here at the bottom to make space for the post, there is no extra line break at the end, so the list footer often crunches the last line of text. even if fixed/added i may include an ASCII character anyway, for issues of symbolism as it relates to code and processing)

x_p