This is the true key question: what are the most important algorithms that would be accelerated by quantum computing?
Maybe there is some room for doubt because some applications might be way better in some implementations, but we should at least have a good general idea.
However, clear information on this really hard to come by, not sure why.
Whenever asked e.g. at: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3390/can-anybody-provide-a-simple-example-of-a-quantum-computer-algorithm/3407 on Physics Stack Exchange people say the infinite mantra:
- Grover: speedup not exponential
- Deutsch: solves an useless problem
- Shor: cryptography is boring, do you have proper optimization or quantum chemistry algorithms that will make trillions?
- Quantum Fourier transform: TODO is the speedup exponential or not?
Ciro Santilli wonders if there is any understandable algorithm that meets the above criteria.
Lists:
- Quantum Algorithm Zoo: the leading list as of 2020
- quantum computing computational chemistry algorithms is the area that Ciro and many people are te most excited about is
- https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3888/np-intermediate-problems-with-efficient-quantum-solutions
- https://mathoverflow.net/questions/33597/are-there-any-known-quantum-algorithms-that-clearly-fall-outside-a-few-narrow-cla