A Working Quantum Computer in 3 Years?

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @10:02PM from the not-with-my-quanta-you-don't dept.

prostoalex writes "Vancouver, BC-based D-Wave Systems got $17.5 mln from Draper Fisher Jurvetson to work on a preliminary version of a quantum computer, Technology Review reports. Delivery date? Within three years: 'It won't be a fully functional quantum computer of the sort long envisioned; but D-Wave is on track to produce a special-purpose, "noisy" piece of quantum hardware that could solve many of the physical-simulation problems that stump today's computers, says David Meyer, a mathematician working on quantum algorithms at the University of California, San Diego.'"

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Re:got my hopes up by Anonymous Coward · 2005-06-21 22:52 · Score: 5, Interesting

but it's not a proper quantum computer. It's based on tunneling, not entanglement.

Nope, it is a quantum computer qubit. E.g. Google for "Cooper pair boxes"

This is a solid state quantum computer, an artifical atom, where the state could be encoded as the presence or absence of charge on an island. It tunnels on and off quantum mechanically, creating a qubit. Its just how the underlying system works.

Entanglement requires the coupling of more than one qubit, and is more part of the maths of QM. However, this may be done practically through capacitve or inductive coupling for the above devices.