Quantum Computers a Reality: Could this crack all our codes?

Source

Twenty years before most scientists expected it, a commercial company has announced a quantum computer that promises to massively speed up searches and optimisation calculations. D-Wave of British Columbia has promised to demonstrate a quantum computer next Tuesday, that can carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously (in parallel "universes"), thanks to a new technique which rethinks the already-uncanny world of quantum computing. But the academic world is taking a wait-and-see approach.

It has been predicted that quantum computing will make current computer security obsolete, cracking any current cryptography scheme by providing an unlimited amount of simultaneous processing resources. Multiple quantum states exist at the same time, so every quantum bit or "qubit" in such a machine is simultaneously 0 and 1. D-Wave's prototype has only 16 qubits, but systems with hundreds of qubits would be able to process more inputs than there are atoms in the universe.

Others are more enthusiastic: "I'll be a bit of a sceptic till I see what they have done," said Professor Seth Lloyd of MIT. "But I'm happy these guys are doing it."

This is amazing! Lets hope this technology isnt bought up and inflated in price!
If you want to read more about how quantum computers work check this article out:
Reversible Computing

To appreciate the feasibility of computing with almost no energy or heat, lets consider the computation that takes place in any ordinary rock. Although it may appear that nothing much is going on inside a rock, the approximately 10^25 (ten trillion trillion) atoms in a kilogram of matter are actualy extremely active. Despite its apparent solidarity, the atoms are all in motion, sharing electrons, changing particle spins, and generating rapidly moving electromagnetic fields. all of this activity represents computation, though not MEANINGFULLY organized.
In terms of computation, and just considering the electromagnetic interactions of a 1 kilogram rock, there are atleast 10^15 changes in state per bit per second, which represents about 10^42 (million trillion trillion trillion) calculations per second. YET THE ROCK REQUIRES NO ENERGY INPUT AND GENERATES NO APPRECIABLE HEAT -Singularity is near

reply to post by VonDoomen

Oh oh, Assange should be scared..he better hope they won't test this on his insurance file password, lol
S&F

We've had this stuff for years... cool that they are finally gonna start releasing more about it.

reply to post by Bonified Ween


while I love to speculate, care to offer any sources?

LOL - I wrote a Sudoku solving algorithm in Microsoft Excel that solves puzzles WAY faster than that "Quantum" one in the video.

This demo did not illustrate any advantage this "DWave" has over conventional computers. Seems like publicity designed to generate investment money for a technology they don't have yet.

reply to post by harrytuttle


well lets not get ahead of ourselves here.

We have to remember, a computer is only as fast as its slowest part. I doubt every part of it is capable of keeping up with its "quantum aspect".

I would also have to say, I believe Quantum computers will be much much better at LARGE number crunching, whereas this soduko puzzle isnt necessarily big. I think we have to see this technology progress more.

These two videos were very hard to watch. Pretty much nothing was shown to prove the speed of the computers, the camera guy had a severe case of ADD, and the most exciting thing to happen was a SudoQ puzzle.

Wow, it's like.. we're totally in the future now. When do I get my flying car?

If it's real, then cool. If it's not, the bummer. I just wish they would show the real potential of a quantum computer, instead of these parlor tricks.

Originally posted by sbctinfantry
If it's real, then cool. If it's not, the bummer. I just wish they would show the real potential of a quantum computer, instead of these parlor tricks.

I saw the demonstration, but why am I still skeptical?

I guess it's because it won't seem real to me until I can buy the quantum computer online, or at least read about commercial customers who are using it if it's too expensive for consumers.

To understand the potential, look at a list of supercomputer customers and ask them which applications they are still having to wait for results. A faster computer means a shorter wait, so that's the potential as I see it right there. You might be able to do some things real-time that weren't possible to do real-time before, like maybe running advanced weather models to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts? The more inputs and the more complicated the weather model, the more computing power you need. This video will give you some idea:

They say they only update the model every 6 hours, perhaps if they had a faster computer they could update it more frequently with current data.

You will find that Iridium in the missing link
Trust me on this. You will find a connection between this and Iridium, who can be bothered to look?