Will Quantum Computing Make It Out of the Lab?

alphadogg writes "Researchers have been working on quantum systems for more than a decade, in the hopes of developing super-tiny, super-powerful computers. And while there is still plenty of excitement surrounding quantum computing, significant roadblocks are causing some to question whether quantum computing will ever make it out of the lab. 'Artur Ekert, professor of Quantum Physics, Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, says physicists today can only control a handful of quantum bits, which is adequate for quantum communication and quantum cryptography, but nothing more. He notes that it will take a few more domesticated qubits to produce quantum repeaters and quantum memories, and even more to protect and correct quantum data. "Add still a few more qubits, and we should be able to run quantum simulations of some quantum phenomena and so forth. But when this process arrives to 'a practical quantum computer' is very much a question of defining what 'a practical quantum computer' really is. The best outcome of our research in this field would be to discover that we cannot build a quantum computer for some very fundamental reason, then maybe we would learn something new and something profound about the laws of nature," Ekert says.'"

Comments

I suspect it will work

[TheSync]

1) We have built qbits
2) We have entangled qbits
3) We have implemented the CNOT which is the universal gate for quantum computing (similar to NAND/NOR universal gates in classical computing)

The question is scaling up number of qbits, increasing coherence times (and possibly using coding solutions to reduce decoherence problems).

We have a number of quantum algorithms waiting to be implemented, and even have quantum programming languages that you can run simulations on at home today. And there is even a LinkedIn Group on quantum information science.

But I must admit that it could end up like fusion. We have all the basic theoretical knowledge of how to do fusion, and we can do a bit of fusion in the lab, what we lack is the engineering knowledge to achieve enough fusion on a large enough scale to make it practical.

Let's not forget...

[Nethemas the Great]

the history of the PC. How many decades did it take for us to get where we are? The first PC was some 50 years in the making and by today's standards was downright laughable in its capabilities. The first computers weren't Von Neumann machines either. You had to have a team of dedicated operators reconfigure patch cables between between outputs and inputs for each an every calculation! To be so pessimistic so early in the life of quantum computing is insulting to the progress we've made so far which is considerably outstripping the pace of development of the modern computer.