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Are Quantum computers just analog computers under a new name?

Philip Oakley
There is plenty of scientific buzz about quantum computing, but almost no engineering.


I'm just old enough to remember the Analog computer (with patch cords and amplifiers) in the back of the of my university electronics lab, with an Intel 8008 in the other.


At that time 'analog' was coming to an end, and digital computing was coming to the masses with all its new languages and special logic (pascal, algol being new kids on the block to replace the veritable FORTRAN).


Now I see that Quantum computing is all the rage, if only someone can get it working, and fathom how to progamme it. However the question remains: "What is the 'it' of which we speak?".


I would posit that what we have a just a new way of interconnecting an 'analog' computer, where the 'feedback'/coding is meant to take the initial random noise, amplify and select the appropriate components, and finally stabilise on some particular bias level that indicates our solution. Hopefully with minimal energy or power consumed by the computation (apart from the cost of running the refrigerator at near 0K).


Where is the engineering explanation and conceptuallisation of Quantum computing?, and Is it just a new fangled Analog computer?


Thoughts...
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    It's more like a strange sort of digital computer.  The numbers in a quantum computer are held as a series of qubits, each of which may be 0, 1 or indeterminate.  So you take your initial data, feed it through a series of logic gates, to implement the algorithm, and then read out the answer.  The act of reading the answer forces any remaining indeterminate qubits to go to 0 or 1.


    If your algorithm is any good, then the result you read out is probably the correct one.  If in doubt, run the same algorithm several times, and pick the most common result.
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  • 0
    It's more like a strange sort of digital computer.  The numbers in a quantum computer are held as a series of qubits, each of which may be 0, 1 or indeterminate.  So you take your initial data, feed it through a series of logic gates, to implement the algorithm, and then read out the answer.  The act of reading the answer forces any remaining indeterminate qubits to go to 0 or 1.


    If your algorithm is any good, then the result you read out is probably the correct one.  If in doubt, run the same algorithm several times, and pick the most common result.
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