Slashdot Mirror
Solid State Quantum Computer Finds 15=3x5 — 48% of the Time
mikejuk writes "The Shor quantum factoring algorithm has been run for the first time on a solid state device and it successfully factored a composite number. A team from UCSB has managed to build and operate a quantum circuit composed of four superconducting phase qubits. The design creates entangled bits faster than before and the team verified that entanglement was happening using quantum tomography. The final part of the experiment implemented the Shor factoring algorithm using 15 as the value to be factored. In 150,000 runs of the calculation, the chip gave the correct result 48% of the time. As Shor's algorithm is only supposed to give the correct answer 50% of the time, this is a good result but not of practical use."
To be fair, it could have been either until we looked.
(And you could have posted either here or at the correct story.)
How is it useful to have the correct answer 50% of the time?
Cat life-support devices.
Historically, they're a bit more tolerant about that math thing.
If you can factor really large prime numbers,
I can factor really large prime numbers in my head.