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."

Comments

How will they be programmed?

[ReformedExCon]

I wonder what sort of programming language would be needed to manipulate such esoteric devices.

Re:They're not really super fast.

[Stan Vassilev]

Indeed my point.

BTW this is why I always thought calling them "computers" is misleading. When you say computer you expect the full thing, being able to handle any PC tasks you throw at it.

I'd rather call it Quantum Processing Unit (QPU), and just like FPU before it it'll play together with the core CPU, not replace it, since you still need a "normal" CPU to display the interface, code editor, to compile code and to show the results of the quantum computations of the QPU.

You can't just grab a QPU and adapt it to do all tasks a moden CPU can. They're just .. different thing.

Shor's Algorithm

[eldavojohn]

One of the most important caveats of today's progress in quantum computing is Shor's Algorith.

Why hasn't quantum computing gone further? Well, first you need to know that it requires your qubit to be tied to nearby qubits. When done with electrons, this is difficult because decoherence sets in very quickly.

In the end, they can "compute" with this string of qubits by bathing it in a certain frequency wavelength. What comes back are the multiple waves with the frequencies of all the prime factorizations of the initial frequency. The initial frequency cannot be greater than 2^(# of qubits).

The information I am relaying to you is from George Johnson's book, A Shortcut Through Time. Which is quite good.

I would also like to point out that the United States Government Lab in Los Alamos has done considerable research regarding this.

As a citizen of the U.S., you are funding this project so you have paid for and are entitled to read about their discoveries and I encourage you to do so if you have the time.

The reason for all this research?

"Many public key cryptosystems, such as RSA, will become obsolete if Shor's algorithm is ever implemented in a practical quantum computer."

~ From the Wiki Talk on Shor's Algorithm