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Purdue Builds Quantum-Computing Semiconductor

Posted by timothy on from the odd-bits dept.

Bfaber writes: "According to EET, Purdue has created the first examples of quantum computing in a semiconductor. The story can be read here. Read the article for further links that include an audio interview."

3 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Encryption... by Peridriga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you havn't you should read a book by Simon Singh called the "Code Book" it essentially is a history of cryptography from beginning to end (e.g. quantum cryptogrophy)....

    The effects of quantum cryptography is huge... Using a quantum computer would allow you to crack huge keys (everything from PGP, RSA, DES, TwoFISH, BlowFISH, etc.... anything you can think of) because of the essential basis of quantum physics...

    Simply in laymen terms you can check muliple cases of a key (i.e. check 111111 and 111112) at the same time... Not just 2 keys but, how about 2 billion keys per second... This makes any key no matter how long easily crackable...

    I promise you the NSA is up early this morning banging on doors at Purdue (hey the probably funded it anyway)....

    Now don't fear... Even though it makes any code breakable it also inheriently creates an unbreakable code using the same theories...

    So start writing all you stuff down and locking in a safe instead of encrypting it on your hard drive.... You data really isn't safe anymore...

    1. Re:Encryption... by color+of+static · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Only public key algorithms suffer from that level of security degradation due to QC. Factoring of a number on the order of 2^n, becomes about n operations on n qubits. Symmetric ciphers (such as blowfish, DES, Twofish, RC5, AES, etc...) only have a reduction in the keyspace needed to search. So if you have a 2^n key, you will have to search 2^(n/2) keys. While there may be a way of QC reducing this further, no current theory lends it's self to this.
      Of course what will it matter when there is a backdoor, and the only security is an Oracle agent smart card issued by the government?

  2. Obsoletes planned crypto laws by magi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they manage to get quantum computing working soon, and working well, we can forget these planned anti-crypto laws. Most crypto algorithms would go useless.

    With quantum computers, the only way to do crypto would be transferring huge XOR mask keys physically (or possibly with quantum encryption channels). Pretty hard.