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Quantum Computer Demoed, Plays Sudoku
prostoalex writes "Canadian company D-Wave Systems is getting some technology press buzz after successfully demonstrating their quantum computer (discussed here earlier) that the company plans to rent out. Scientific American has a more technical description of how the quantum computer works, as well as possible areas of application: 'The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles.' Another attendee provides some videos from the demo." Anyone want to guess how long before "qubit" gets compressed to "quit" (as "bigit" became "bit" in the last century)?
There are fast and almost-exact algorithms for Traveling Salesman problem that are good enough for practical purposes.
And to avoid the massive worldwide suicide of voice-recognition software who suddenly log-out the computer, in the mid of the dictation of some research paper...
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The first digital computer systems did not solve anything "amazing" but the fact that they solved anything at all was the amazing bit.
Quantum computing is very new (in the physically exists sense) and the fact that they figured out how to build, program, and extract the solutions for some, albeit relatively simple, problems is a major step forward.
Once the understanding is complete enough and reliable enough then the really tough problems will be sure to follow.