Homely Scientist

 Quantum computing?  Isn’t that from like Minority Report or Back to the Future?  No, it’s for real and available now.

A Canadian manufacturer today unveiled what it called “the world’s first commercially viable quantum computer.” D-Wave Systems, Inc., “The Quantum Computing Company,” during a much ballyhooed rollout at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., hailed the new device as a big step toward the age of quantum computing, decades earlier than scheduled.
Source: Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: First “Commercial” Quantum Computer Solves Sudoku Puzzles — Quantum computing company banks on a long-shot form of quantum computing

So here’s the deal.  Right now computers are binary.  So when it comes down to it all everything you do is really a series of ones and zeros.  So 111010000101101101 would have some kind of meaning, no don’t ask me I just made that up.  Now quantum computing uses atomic states, which means something can be 1 and 0 simultaneously.  The first real applications, beyond soloving Sudoku puzzles, will be encryption and code breaking.  A quantum processor can made a code that can never be broken and if tappered with enroute, is destroyed.  Fro code breaking, what we’re talking about is such a vast amount of calculations per second that all the potential keys to crack an encrypted file could be gone through, in minutes … or less.

There is chatter that this quantum processor isn’t for real and didn’t do what it did.  In fact this processor isn’t even as powerful as today’s computers by a long shot.

I say that regardless of the chatter, this is one of those breakthrough moments.  Oh, and it’s Canadian too.

Comments Off