I have not seen any description of a general-purpose programmable quantum computer, which could simulate an arbitrary quantum system, like a digital computer.
All the examples given that I have seen were for making a hardwired simulator for a concrete quantum system, e.g. some chemical macromolecule of interest, to be used much in the same way as analog computers were used in the past for simulating systems governed by differential equations too complex to be simulated by the early digital computers in an acceptable time.
Are hard coded quantum simulators even the same thing though? Like, if we’re saying that the goal of a quantum simulator is merely to run a high dimensional problem and exploit the nature of qubits to make it simpler to handle those imaginary vectors and what not…
Does that actually follow the same framework as “traditional” “quantum computing”, e.g. struggles with error correction / problem formulation specifically designed to avoid unnecessary calculations?
It feels like although a quantum simulator could viably work to simulate a specific system, it shouldn’t make it any easier to actually understand the system it is simulating and could maybe just indicate how complex by the amount of variation in simulation outcomes (which isn’t useless). Is that accurate?
All the examples given that I have seen were for making a hardwired simulator for a concrete quantum system, e.g. some chemical macromolecule of interest, to be used much in the same way as analog computers were used in the past for simulating systems governed by differential equations too complex to be simulated by the early digital computers in an acceptable time.