First Quantum Byte Created

gila_monster writes "Juice Enews Daily is reporting that the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Innsbruck in Austria has created an entanglement of eight quantum particles, yielding a quantum byte or 'qubyte,' or eight qubits. The formal paper was published in the December 1 issue of Nature. A qubyte with eight ions provides a computing matrix of 65536 mostly independent elements. No word in the article about whether they were able to actually use the qubyte for computing."

no word in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

No word in the article about whether they were able to actually use the qubyte for computing

I think we can be sure that if somebody had unlocked the secret of quantum computing there's a chance they'd say so at some point.

Re:Que?

[marol]

Don't you mean 4^x?

*Ominous thunder*

[Sockatume]

Today, a qubit. In a couple of decades, a functional quantum computer. At the risk of being hyperbolic, it will do for secrecy and privacy what the atomic bomb did for international conflict.

Unless quantum cryptography gets there first. The race is on.

Re:no word in the article

[David Hume]

I think we can be sure that if somebody had unlocked the secret of quantum computing there's a chance they'd say so at some point.

Unless that someone worked for the National Security Agency [nsa.gov].

Re:Whats a Qbit?

[centie]

A qubit is a superposition of two states, a 1 and a 0 if you like. So it containes some 0 and some 1, or written as a|0> + b|1>, where a and b describe "how much" (more accuratly the probability) of 0 and 1 in the state. a and b are in general complex numbers. One qubit has then 2d hilbert space, 2 quibits 4d and 3 quibts 8d etc. So 8 qubits has a 256 dimensional space for its complex amplitudes (a and b etc) to inhabit.

Quantum Calculations

[mustafap]

My laymans understanding of quantum computing is that it will enable massively parallel calculations to occur simulataneously.

The problem however is that you get all the answers simultaneously, and that the *real* problem is then finding efficient algorithms to search the results space.

Could someone who actually knows what that all means dumb it down to our level, and explain how quantum computing will actually be useful?

Re:Is it just me

[coolGuyZak]

Your perspective of 2900 AD/CE is obviously flawed. In 2900, there will be no tomatoes or anchovies due to global warming. Ketchup won't exist.

And that is completely ignoring the inevitable triumph of ID...

Scalability

[Darius Jedburgh]

People have been expecting quantum computing to take off in a big way but after a couple of decades of research we still have only machines with a handful of qubits. I claimed from day one that the difficulty of building a quantum computer with memory N goes up exponentially. Because of Moore's law type effects our ability to build computers goes up exponentially. The net result is that I expect the memory of quantum computers to go up linearly over time, not exponentially like classical computers. I think we're seeing this borne out over the years. So don't expect quantum algorithms to crack codes any time soon. For what it's worth, I think the claims of scalability in the article are BS - but we'll see...