{"id":5797,"date":"2025-08-01T05:04:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T05:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/01\/cheating-on-quantum-computing-benchmarks-html\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T05:04:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T05:04:17","slug":"cheating-on-quantum-computing-benchmarks-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/01\/cheating-on-quantum-computing-benchmarks-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheating on Quantum Computing Benchmarks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Cheating on Quantum Computing Benchmarks<\/div>\n

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Peter Gutmann and Stephan Neuhaus have a new paper<\/a>\u2014I think it\u2019s new, even though it has a March 2025 date\u2014that makes the argument that we shouldn\u2019t trust any of the quantum factorization benchmarks, because everyone has been cooking the books:<\/p>\n

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Similarly, quantum factorisation is performed using sleight-of-hand numbers that have been selected to make them very easy to factorise using a physics experiment and, by extension, a VIC-20, an abacus, and a dog. A standard technique is to ensure that the factors differ by only a few bits that can then be found using a simple search-based approach that has nothing to do with factorisation\u2026. Note that such a value would never be encountered in the real world since the RSA key generation process typically requires that |p-q| > 100 or more bits [9]. As one analysis puts it, \u201cInstead of waiting for the hardware to improve by yet further orders of magnitude, researchers began inventing better and better tricks for factoring numbers by exploiting their hidden structure\u201d [10].<\/p>\n

A second technique used in quantum factorisation is to use preprocessing on a computer to transform the value being factorised into an entirely different form or even a different problem to solve which is then amenable to being solved via a physics experiment\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lots more in the paper, which is titled \u201cReplication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog.\u201d He points out the largest number that has been factored legitimately by a quantum computer is 35.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t known these details, but I\u2019m not surprised. I have<\/a> long<\/a> said<\/a> that the engineering problems between now and a useful, working quantum computer are hard. And by \u201chard,\u201d we don\u2019t know if it\u2019s \u201cland a person on the surface of the moon\u201d hard, or \u201cland a person on the surface of the sun\u201d hard. They\u2019re both hard, but very different. And we\u2019re going to hit those engineering problems one by one, as we continue to develop the technology. While I don\u2019t think quantum computing is \u201csurface of the sun\u201d hard, I don\u2019t expect them to be factoring RSA moduli anytime soon. And\u2014even there\u2014I expect lots of engineering challenges in making Shor\u2019s Algorithm work on an actual quantum computer with large numbers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cheating on Quantum Computing Benchmarks Peter Gutmann and Stephan Neuhaus have a new paper\u2014I think it\u2019s new, even though it has a March 2025 date\u2014that makes the argument that we shouldn\u2019t trust any of the quantum factorization benchmarks, because everyone has been cooking the books: Similarly, quantum factorisation is performed using sleight-of-hand numbers that have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,57,473,1643,1],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-5797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-papers","category-bruce-schneier","category-cheating","category-quantum-computing","category-uncategorized","tag-bruce-schneier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}