Conference Presentation, Keynote
Chad Rigetti at Startup School SV 2016
- The company aims to approach a quantum supremacy machine by next year.
- Quantum computing technology is positioned as a competitive race to define industry standards for the next 20 to 40 years.
- Predicted applications include simulation-driven design of new catalysts for capturing atmospheric carbon or nitrogen and the development of more powerful artificial intelligence.
- The technology is expected to offer a more efficient and cost-effective path to exascale computing compared to current methods, potentially solving global warming challenges.
- Conventional transistor scaling has stagnated for the past eight years.
- An exascale computer built with current technology by 2020 is predicted to cost approximately one billion dollars and require a nuclear power plant to operate.
- A single chip containing roughly 60 to 70 qubits is projected to outperform a machine the size of half a football field using classical hardware.
- Significant energy inefficiencies in current technology are highlighted, with estimates ranging from 100 billion to 10^17 photons per bit processed for a device the size of an iPhone 7.
- Successful hard tech ventures are anticipated to generate substantial leverage and defensibility.
- Strategic plans include a full-stack approach involving applications and new drug design.
- The organization intends to recruit individuals capable of reducing internal entropy to enhance operational power.
- It is predicted that a team of 34 individuals can out-compete large incumbent entities in the high-performance computing sector.
- There is an expressed hope that the company succeeds and that the underlying simulation does not shut down.