Quantum Computers are Coming to a Desk Near You in 20 Years

” I believe that in 20 years at the most, quantum computers will be used in everyday life on people’s desktops.” says Richard Gray.

Who is Richard Gray? I really have no idea, and I don’t want to do any further research on this coo-coo idea of quantum physics being grasped so easily.

A normal computer uses little switches to memorize data through binary code. It has an on and off position, and the number of switches a memory board has is based off bit-processing of it. Most computers are built with 64-bit chips. A quantum computer expands upon the switch idea by using atoms - protons, neutrons, and all that complex crap you slept through in high school chemistry class - to process the data. Where a switch in todays computers can only be on or off, not both, atoms have the ability to work inside quantum physical laws. That is, they be in two places at one time, in two different physical states. Confused? So am I. What it is saying is that these switches can be on and off at the same time.

This allows for much faster processing… in fact… billions of times faster. If scientists and engineers can nail down the quantum computer, we are talking about comparing today’s top of the line Alienware computers against old Ataris and Commadore 64s. That means some awesome gaming.

What else does it mean? Well, it is something that could be quite worrisome. Banks and governments use encryptions that would take a normal computer thousands of years to crack. With a quantum computer, codes could be cracked within a few instances. Assuming a quantum computer is ever manufactured, the market better be ready for it. New systems of security would need to be built and implemented everywhere - banks, governments, emails, websites… nothing would be safe. Quantum encrytion…

The day of the invention of the quantum computer will be a hacker’s field day.

Here are some more facts about the Quantum Computer:

• Typical personal computers calculate 64 bits of data at a time. A 64-qubit quantum computer would be about 18 billion billion times faster.
• A working quantum computer could be so mind-bogglingly powerful that it would solve in seconds certain problems that would take the fastest supercomputer millions of years to complete.
• Consumers, credit card companies and high-tech firms rely on cryptography to protect sensitive information. The basis for encryption systems is that computers would need thousands of years to factor a large number, making it very difficult to do. But a QC could break the most complicated encryption in hours.
• One of the more bizarre properties of QCs was identified by a team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They presented the first demonstration of “counter-factual computation”, inferring information about an answer, even though the computer itself did not run.
• Quantum computers could also take advantage of another quantum property, teleportation. Teleportation allows information about one particle to be transmitted to another particle some distance away. A quantum computer could use teleportation instead of wires to move bits around inside itself.
• Quantum computation has captured the imagination of the scientific community, recasting some of the most puzzling aspects of quantum physics - once pondered by Einstein, Schrödinger and others - in the context of advancing computer science.

Could quantum computers be what we need? I think it is inevitable that they will come at some point, but I think it will take longer than 20 years. Weren’t futurists from 20 years ago suggesting that we would have had flying cars by now? And then there is the problem of hackers and others using this tool for evil. The solution should be formed before the problem. But we as humans like to form problems and then create solutions (oil, global warming, George Bush, Jr., etc…)

[via newindpress]

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