Ask HN: Resources for better understanding quantum computing

1 points by _heimdall 15 hours ago

Can anyone recommend resources to better understand the physics behind how a quantum computer works, or how they will work in theory?

I've been digging around trying to find a solid explanation for how they actually work, not just that they leverage superposition to do magic.

White papers welcome here, I'm not opposed to diving down a very technical theoretical physics rabbit hole if that's where the information lives today.

A few examples of questions I'm trying to better understand:

How does the computer control qubits in superposition to actually compute mathematical equations, for example?

How can the processor/controller check a qubit's value without collapsing superposition?

If only 105 qubits allow Google to calculate in 5 minutes what would take a normal CPU 10 septillion years to do, how is it possible that they're still years away from even doing anything useful? I get the challenges of error correction, but I haven't found any clear description of precisely what Willow computed or whether they did some basic tests and extrapolated with a few assumptions of scalability.