Quantum Computers

I've been holding off on blogging this one... apparently some guys in Canada have a working quantum computer.

WOW is all I can say... if it works, it'll be 20 years early.

Here's a link to a blog describing some of the hardware

Fortunatly the demo will be posted online for us to view tomorrow. A 16 bit Quantum computer should be able to process 65,536 operations simultaneously. I'm not even sure how one developes "software" for such a thing anyway - it's not programatic at all, merely statistical.

Strangely for me, the description of piloting The Heart of Gold (from Adam's Restaurant at the end of the universe) is quite a decent explanation of how quantum computers work from the laymen perspective.

What's really incredible here is that they claim to be able to solve a particular subset of NP complete problems based on the Ising statistical model. NP complete problems are the problems that no computer can solve efficiently - like how to schedule 300 airline flights a day in the most efficient manner. How to price a product across markets to maximize profits.

It's easy to verify the solution (you make money hehehe), but computing the solution takes forever. An example, what two prime integer numbers multiplied provide this solution:

18819881292060796383869723946165043980716356337941
73827007633564229888597152346654853190606065047430
45317388011303396716199692321205734031879550656996
221305168759307650257059

Easy Right? I mean, it's just two numbers you multiple and get that answer. Any computer should whip that out in a jiffy... Yeah..., um... NO.

I don't believe that this particular device will solve such problems, but if it does, or a cousin pops in next year - you can kiss SSL away (Yeah, as in HTTPS, as in your online bank, ebay, amazon. Also, don't forget PGP, and RSA digital signatures)

RSA - which SSL uses - depends on exactly the same problem to protect the keys used to secure your credit card through a symetric cypher. There are alternatives - but they're not nearly as easy and conveinient.

In my doomsday analysis - quantum computing is really the equivelent of the Internet A bomb - it makes the data security equivelent of rifles, tanks, and submarines into toys when applied to the right problems. But just like Oppenheimer, what scientist WOULDN"T want the chance to play with such a device?

Perhaps pandora's box is more suitible.