IBM Touts Quantum Computing Breakthrough

Lucas123 writes "IBM today claimed to have been able to reduce error rates and retain the integrity of quantum mechanical properties in quantum bits or qubits long enough to perform a gate operation, opening the door to new microfabrication techniques that allow engineers to begin designing a quantum computer. While still a long ways off, the creation of a quantum computer would mean data processing power would be exponentially increased over what is possible with today's silicon-based computing."

Comments

Re:Exponentially?

[drooling-dog]

Oy... The rate is constant, meaning that the increase is in constant proportion to the value of the function at any given time. That's why calculations of continuous compound growth take exponential form, and it's a result of e^x being its own derivative, as you point out.

Of course neither the OP nor I were talking about the computational order ("Big-O") of a quantum algorithm, because no specific algorithm was under discussion. If such algorithms were typically exponential in N - i.e., O(e^N) - that wouldn't be very encouraging news, would it? The word "exponentially" was clearly used to mean a large, discontinuous increase - a quantum leap, if you will - and not the kind of smooth, fixed-rate growth that it implies in reality.

But, whatever... It's a peeve of mine.