NSA data centre power surges & unknowns...

[brian carroll]

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)

xp
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