Quantum computers take another baby step towards becoming a reality

Austrian Scientists at the IQOQI (Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information) have created the first Quantum Byte consisting of 8 Calcium Ions.

Quantum Computing is still in it's infancy. The Quantum Byte is a step forward towards the Quantum Computer. Quantum Computers are supposed to be super fast and solve problems conventional computers can not.

The IQOQI research results are published in the new Nature magazine. The US based National Institute of Technology in Colorado only was able to great 6 bits so far. Their results are also published in the Nature magazine.

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Too bad it will be at least 15 more years (in my opinion) before quantum computers become a reality.

You only have to scale this up by a factor of 128 and you now have a system that can crack a 1K RSA Key.

However, the error on a quantum bit is something like 10% which is 10,000 times worse than even a bad classical system. I think it may be a long long time before we get a reliable quantum computer.

Is following this path worth it?

Is the theoretical performance big enough to start a research that is decades behind?

Can it be developed fast enough to catch with current systems?