Quantum Computing?!

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsID=7972&pagtype=all

Sounds like it.
Pretty exciting; especially since they are located and are presenting very near where I live!
I'll have to survive for a whole week, though :(

They seem strangely keen on this whole "Making history" idea, but I'll stay optimistic that they will since this kind of stuff is just too good to not be optimistic about.
With processing speeds as fast as this thing can potentially get, it seems possible to find a brute-force solution to practically anything!

Those who don't know what a quantum computer is (I only half did):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

Seems kind of weird that they would have something considering that the science was still pretty new just last year, so there are still chances that they've only half built a quantum computer. After all, it is going through some really intense cooling, and it isn't nearly as fast as the stuff they hope to push out in the future. (From a specs point of view, it's really quite pointless. They say 100 qubits by 2008, but I guess we'll see how this one goes first).
(In other words, if it screws up: "I knew it!"; if it works: "I told you!")

16 qubits ... sweet ... a few dozen more and it can replace the egg fryer (P4) ...
That is not bad, but at least a few hundreds are needed until quantum computers have more power than what we have.
Their main pro is the parallel computation.
That will make a difference in the future. But for the moment, they are of not much use for "regular users"
I personally think that they will be able to find an optotronic solution with Si which would allow to further use it as main resource for eletronic components.. (GaAs is just too expensive and restricted to use it as common component material, although it beats Si in anything else than price)


Beside that the first quantum computer is in use for quite some time now. Its an encrypter that uses a single quantum dot. Quantum encryption has the sweet effect that only the twin can decrypt it, no other quantum, so no possibility to break security unless current physics is wrong.

My physics prof is one of those that works with the qubit stuff here at ETH Zurich. So I don't believe he would tell us crap ^^

I've just wikipedia'd Quantum Computing, read all the linked articles, and I still can't even understand what it is!

This is probably a better explanation.

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-intro.html


Andy

Nope, still utter greek to me.

From what I understand, Quantum computers will be very good at solving certain "hard" problems, that is, problems that would take hundreds or thousands of years to solve by brute force, but will be poor at just being general PC's.

So if you want to factor primes fast, a quantum computer will do the job quickly. But if you want to run Excel, then you should use a regular PC.

Yay!
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/14/worlds-first-commercial-quantum-computer-solves-sudoku/
It's real, and... it solves Sudoku! :b

Okay, the trick with quantum computing is that instead of bits which are either 1 or 0, we have qubits. Qubits involve all sorts of with quantum theory that is way over my head, with the basic principle being: A value can be 1, 0, or both at the same time.
This makes various calculations very easy for a quantum computer for reasons that are mostly beyond my knowledge.

I found the qubit article on Wikipedia fairly helpful (if you follow its links):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit

This stuff is interesting because quantum mechanics have always felt rather unbelievable to me. When there is something real like a computer actually using those strange ideas in a reliable manner, it is really surprising!