1 Molecule Computes Thousands of Times Faster Than a PC

alexhiggins732 writes with this tantalizing PopSci snippet: "A demo of a quantum calculation carried out by Japanese researchers has yielded some pretty mind-blowing results: a single molecule can perform a complex calculation thousands of times faster than a conventional computer. A proof-of-principle test run of a discrete Fourier transform — a common calculation using spectral analysis and data compression, among other things — performed with a single iodine molecule transpired very well, putting all the molecules in your PC to shame."

Comments

Thats cheating

[imsabbel]

In a way. thats just the same as claiming a laser can caluclate a 2D FFT if you look at the frauenhofer diffraction of an aperture.
Or that single candle can render better than any GPU by the way a room looks like when its illuminated by it.

You just have to redefine a basic property of your system as "calculation"