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Quantum Computing Using Traditional Transistors
Ocean Consulting writes "UCLA is reporting progress on the quantum computing front by announcing success in controlling the spin of a single electron using an ordinary transistor." It's been a long road for the researchers involved, and even the project lead, Hong Wen Jiang admits, "...our initial theoretical calculations were very favorable, and gave us confidence to persevere."
Quantum computing, which holds the promise of nearly unlimited processing power, secure communications and the ability to decode encrypted conversations by terrorists and others, is a significant step closer to becoming a reality today with new research published by a team of UCLA scientists in the journal Nature.
So which is it, secure communications or communications that can be spied on? It can't be both.
From the article:
"With 100 transistors, each containing one of these electrons, you could have the implicit information storage that corresponds to all of the hard disks made in the world this year, multiplied by the number of years the universe has been around," Yablonovitch said. "And why stop with 100 transistors?"
Of course, because with 101 transistors you could store as many Library of Congress as there are electrons in the visible universe on a disk the size of 2 square hogs for a duration of up to 3.4256 parsecs.
Unfortunately, it will take up to as many (1/98742) of year as it took in seconds for Apollo 11 to reach the moon from the launch pad to design such a hard-drive.
Why is it scientists always use weird units? I have absolutely no clue of what "the implicit information storage that corresponds to all of the hard disks made in the world this year, multiplied by the number of years the universe has been around" actually represents in bytes.
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"(Up'ing clockspeed constantly and decreasing chip size is not evolutionary.) "
actually, it is evolutionary, just not revolutionary.
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From the article:
Quantum computing, which holds the promise of nearly unlimited processing power, secure communications and the ability to decode encrypted conversations by terrorists and others (emphasis mine)
Take special note of the word others, which should be read as everyone. The government will be falling all over themselves to support this research and inherit a technology that makes encryption virtually useless.
I'm all for advancing technology, and no doubt quantum computing will be a great leap forward. It's just a shame that our privacy will be sacrificed in the process.
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is great. Until the technology becomes ubiquitous enough that even terrorists have access to it. Then what? It's secure...even from us.
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