Quantum computer breakthrough, 9000x faster than a supercomputer

Not really. But what I do know: regular computers are made up of billions of transistors which are kinda like dams for electricity. They either let electricity through or block it so they can only model 2 states. This is why computers use binary and everything computers do is built on this fact. But instead of using transistors, quantum computers use qubits, which can model more than 2 states and totally changes the fundamental way computers approach computation.

This is a great (but quite complicated) explanation to actually understand how it works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RGEYYJmMtU

Here's my still learning understanding (please correct me where I'm wrong!).

Imagine you have N possible states and you're interested in what causes M of those Ex: I have two dice with 6x6=36 possible states. I'm interested when they sum to 3 (2 possible states). N=36, M=2.

With a classical computer you'd have to test each possibility of N feeding in Value(die1), Value(die2). Then you'd need to check each value to see if the sum is 3.

Quick background
Quantum bit (qbit) = probability of being a 0/1. So we represent this as [P(0), P(1)]
Entanglement = If two qbits are entangled, and we effect one (A), the other (B) is effected. Note: we can do a lot of powerful things like rotations of [P(0), P(1)] so watch the video to learn about that!

With a quantum computer we can take a quantum bit (qbit) A and entangle it with other qbits B,C,D,.. etc. Now feed A through a quantum gate to change its PA(0). PB(0), PC(0), PD(0), etc. are all effected. Thus by putting a SINGLE qbit through a SINGLE quantum gate, we've done calculations on ALL qbits. The idea here is that as we keep operating on this SINGLE qbit, we keep doing calculations on ALL qbits.

Ok so how does this help us with our original problem (finding the cause of M interesting states out of N possible states)?

1. Create qbits (input vector) to represent all N possible states. If this were a classical vector it would represent just a single combination of Value(die1) and Value(die2). Ie [5,6] in bits.

2. Create qbits (output vector) to represent the sum of die1 + die2 for all possible states of Value(die1) and Value(die2). Ie [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] in bits

3. (Imp detail explained in the video) Create a qbit to represent whether or not it's interesting (sum=3) for the current value of the output vector (#2).

4. Feed the input vector (#1) through a quantum circuit. Classically this would calculate the sum of die1 + die2 = 11. So set the 10th element (corresponding to the sum=11) in the output vector to be 1 and all other elements to be 0. This says that this value of die1 and die2 has 100% probability to be 11 and 0% probability to be something else.

5. Do some quantum shenanigans

Ok so I may have lied a little bit. In quantum computing these bits are probabilities, not exact values. So in #1 I wasn't feeding in die1=5 and die2=6. I was feeding in a probability distribution of all possible states (lookup superposition if you don't think this is possible). And guess what? As output from my quantum circuit I also get probabilities. So our updated step 4 is

4. Feed the input vector (#1) through a quantum circuit. Set the output vector to be the probabilities for each possible sum given the input vector's probabilities.
5. Do some quantum shenanigans which increases the output vector's probabilities to be the desired value (3 in our example).
6. Send our modified output vector through our quantum circuit in the opposite direction. This makes our input vector's probabilities to be more probable of the possible solutions.
7. Take this updated input vector and repeat #4-6 a few times and the input vector's probabilities converges to the possible solutions.
8. Measure the input vector so it snaps to a specific value using the new probabilities.
9. It's highly likely that you now have one of the solutions

Voila!

Is this faster? Well according to the video you'd only have to do this sqrt(N/M) times (I believe the video says that doing it that many times guarantees the correct answer minus any measurement noise/thermal noise but I'm still working that one out)

Quantum computing is a type of computation that harnesses the collective properties of quantum states, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement, to perform calculations. The devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers.[1]: I-5  Though current quantum computers are too small to outperform usual (classical) computers for practical applications, they are believed to be capable of solving certain computational problems, such as integer factorization (which underlies RSA encryption), substantially faster than classical computers.

That's from wikipedia. But the answer is no. I really can't.