Closing In On Quantum Computing

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“For more than two decades,” writes Valerie C. Coffey (@StellarEdit), “one of the holy grails of physics has been to build a quantum computer that can process certain types of large-scale, very difficult problems exponentially faster than classical computers. Physicists are making progress toward this goal every day, but nearly every part of a quantum computer still needs re-engineering or redesign to make it all work.” ["The Incremental Quest for Quantum Computing," Photonics Spectra, 6 June 2014]

With companies like Google and Microsoft seriously pursuing the subject of quantum computing, progress towards creating a indisputable quantum computer is likely to speed up. I say an “indisputable” quantum computer because the Canadian company D-Wave already has a quantum computer on the market; but, scientists are torn over whether it truly operates as a quantum computer. The problem with quantum computing is that you can never look under the hood to see what is going on because such an act would interfere with the quantum magic that allows a particle (in this case, a qubit) to be both a zero and a one at the same time. The following explanatory video calls this a “secret computation.” If you are new the subject of quantum computing, you’ll find the video both fascinating and insightful.