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Innovative Ion Trap on a Semiconductor
Denix writes "MIT's TechnologyReview has an interesting article on a silicon-based "ion trap" in order to host a "qubit." The Ion Trap technology 'uses electric and magnetic fields to isolate a charged particle from its environment -- a prerequisite for exploiting the temperamental quantum properties of electrons."
Ion traps aren't particularly clever in themselves, but making them small- and mass-producing them- is important for quantum computing, which is where the research in the article is pointing.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Read up on Ion traps at: http://www.ionsource.com/links/iontrap.htm
Also, Wikipedia has quite a bit of useful information, especially regarding Paul traps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_trap
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
The quantum programming wikipedia article has a link to a rather neat paper by Simon Gay, titled Quantum Programming Languages: Survey and Bibliography. This seems to give a pretty good overview of current thinking regarding what sorts of programming languages would be appropriate for quantum computation. The abstract:
The field of quantum programming languages is developing rapidly and there is a surprisingly large literature. Research in this area includes the design of programming languages for quantum computing, the application of established semantic and logical techniques to the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the design of compilers for quantum programming languages. This article justfies the study of quantum programming languages, presents the basics of quantum computing, surveys the literature in quantum programming languages, and indicates directions for future research.
He has the bibliography, complete with paper links available here.
Well you're correct: working with databases WILL be one of the strong points of quantum computers. However as for the 8-bit 16-bit argument.. 16-bit is an upgrade to 8-bit technology that still can address content in bytes, you still run linear commands and get predictable results out of it.
Quantum computers are not evolution from computer technology, they're an entirely new beast. It's not even like PowerPC vs Intel or anything. You can't just "port" programs to it that are made for regular PC-s.
They are also not better in data throughput or speed as a technology on their own. They use aspects of quantum mechanics (which scientists still can't explain why they happen in first place) to run very specialised set of tasks through it and obtain results that'd take years of loops on a normal PC to compute.
I still don't see it in my mobile phone or PC, was my point.