Quantum Computer Possible From Silicon Fab

Cash Mitchell writes: "This article from the EE Times says 'Researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison claim to have created the world's first successful simulation of a quantum-computer architecture that uses existing silicon fabrication techniques.... With existing fabrication techniques, the team estimates that a million-quantum-dot computer (1,024 x 1,024 array) could be built today and operated in the megahertz range.'"

Comments

So, what can a million qubits calculate?

[awfar]

What are practical, everyday use? (besides breaking incredibly big and long keys to steal identities) These things operate at room temperature and are small and cheap enough for everyone to have.

A personal weather forecaster, fluid dynamic calculating, realtime, 3d cellphone with a cute ring tone? Or a wash machine that can predict el nino's?

Help me here...

Is this the end of privacy?

[Sanity]

One of the wonderful things about assymetric cryptography is that it removed the need for secure transmission of private keys, an expensive process that in many cases made cryptography the sole-preserve of governments and other powerful organisations.

Quantum computers could render assymetric crypto next-to-useless, and as-such may permenantly set electronic privacy back decades for all but the super-powerful.

Those that claim quantum cryptography will redress this problem don't understand that quantum crypto will likely be even more expensive than secure symmetric cryptography.

In essence, the advent of quantum computers may be the turning point, the point where advances in computer communication are no-longer tools of freedom, but become, once more, tools of the powerful.

Several thousand qubits is enough...

[tbo]

...to break RSA. Specifically, I believe that Shor's Algorithm requires 3n qubits, where n is the number of bits of the number you're trying to factor. Multiply by a factor of five to allow some error correction, and you need about 15k qubits to crack 1024-bit RSA.

I work in the field (still an undergrad, but I'm doing some research), and I had the opportunity to meet Michael Nielsen a little while ago when he visited the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo. Nielsen is one of the two authors of the book you mentioned. Out of curiousity, what university do you go to, Misanthropic?

Quantum computing, Penrose, and AI

[Goonie]

Penrose's assertion that human intelligence is non-algorithmic may or may not be true; however, most mathematicians and logicians who have studied his proof think it's hopelessly flawed.

As for the use of quantum computers in AI - at present, nobody has provided an example of a vaguely AI-related problem that quantum computers of the type currently being studied would be useful for. Somebody may do so in the future, of course. In any case, anything that can be done on a quantum computer can be simulated on a normal one (in a theoretical sense, it may take till the end of the universe to do so). They don't give you the ability to compute anything "non-algorithmic".