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While computers have been around for the majority of the 20th century, quantum computing was first

theorized less than 30 years ago,


by a physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory. Paul Benioff is credited with first applying quantum theory to computers in 1981.
Benioff theorized about creating a quantum Turing machine.
Defining the quantum computer
The Turing machine, developed by Alan Turing in the 1930s, is a theoretical device that consists of tape of unlimited length that is
divided into little squares. Each square can either hold a symbol (1 or 0) or be left blank. A read-write device reads these symbols and
blanks, which gives the machine its instructions to perform a certain program. Does this sound familiar? Well, in a quantum Turing
machine, the difference is that the tape exists in a quantum state, as does the read-write head. This means that the symbols on the tape
can be either 0 or 1 or a superposition of 0 and 1; in other words the symbols are both 0 and 1 (and all points in between) at the same
time. While a normal Turing machine can only perform one calculation at a time, a quantum Turing machine can perform many
calculations at once.
Today's computers, like a Turing machine, work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers
aren't limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in superposition. Qubits
represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their respective control devices that are working together to act as computer
memory and a processor. Because a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be
millions of times more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputers.

This superposition of qubits is what gives quantum computers their inherent parallelism. According to physicist David Deutsch, this
parallelism allows a quantum computer to work on a million computations at once, while your desktop PC works on one. A 30-qubit
quantum computer would equal the processing power of a conventional computer that could run at 10 teraflops (trillions of floating-
point operations per second). Today's typical desktop computers run at speeds measured in gigaflops (billions of floating-point
operations per second).
Quantum computers also utilize another aspect of quantum mechanics known as entanglement. One problem with the idea of quantum
computers is that if you try to look at the subatomic particles, you could bump them, and thereby change their value. If you look at a
qubit in superposition to determine its value, the qubit will assume the value of either 0 or 1, but not both (effectively turning your spiffy
quantum computer into a mundane digital computer). To make a practical quantum computer, scientists have to devise ways of making
measurements indirectly to preserve the system's integrity. Entanglement provides a potential answer. In quantum physics, if you apply
an outside force to two atoms, it can cause them to become entangled, and the second atom can take on the properties of the first
atom. So if left alone, an atom will spin in all directions. The instant it is disturbed it chooses one spin, or one value; and at the same
time, the second entangled atom will choose an opposite spin, or value. This allows scientists to know the value of the qubits without
actually looking at them.

QUBIT CONTROL
Computer scientists control the microscopic particles that act as qubits in quantum computers by usingcontrol devices.
Ion traps use optical or magnetic fields (or a combination of both) to trap ions.
Optical traps use light waves to trap and control particles.
Quantum dots are made of semiconductor material and are used to contain and manipulate electrons.
Semiconductor impurities contain electrons by using "unwanted" atoms found in semiconductor material.
Superconducting circuits allow electrons to flow with almost no resistance at very low temperatures.
Today's Quantum Computers
Quantum computers could one day replace silicon chips, just like the transistor once replaced the vacuum tube. But for now, the
technology required to develop such a quantum computer is beyond our reach. Most research in quantum computing is still very
theoretical.
The most advanced quantum computers have not gone beyond manipulating more than 16 qubits, meaning that they are a far cry from
practical application. However, the potential remains that quantum computers one day could perform, quickly and easily, calculations
that are incredibly time-consuming on conventional computers. Several key advancements have been made in quantum computing in
the last few years. Let's look at a few of the quantum computers that have been developed.
1998
Los Alamos and MIT researchers managed to spread a single qubit across three nuclear spins in each molecule of a liquid solution
ofalanine (an amino acid used to analyze quantum state decay) ortrichloroethylene (a chlorinated hydrocarbon used for quantum
error correction) molecules. Spreading out the qubit made it harder to corrupt, allowing researchers to use entanglement to study
interactions between states as an indirect method for analyzing the quantum information.
2000
In March, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory announced the development of a 7-qubit quantum computer within a single drop
of liquid. The quantum computer uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to manipulate particles in the atomic nuclei of molecules of
trans-crotonic acid, a simple fluid consisting of molecules made up of six hydrogen and four carbon atoms. The NMR is used to
apply electromagneticpulses, which force the particles to line up. These particles in positions parallel or counter to the magnetic field
allow the quantum computer to mimic the information-encoding of bits in digital computers.
Researchers at IBM-Almaden Research Center developed what they claimed was the most advanced quantum computer to date in
August. The 5-qubit quantum computer was designed to allow the nuclei of five fluorine atoms to interact with each other as qubits, be
programmed by radio frequency pulses and be detected by NMR instruments similar to those used in hospitals (see How Magnetic
Resonance Imaging Works for details). Led by Dr. Isaac Chuang, the IBM team was able to solve in one step a mathematical problem
that would take conventional computers repeated cycles. The problem, called order-finding, involves finding the period of a particular
function, a typical aspect of many mathematical problems involved in cryptography.
2001
Scientists from IBM and Stanford University successfully demonstrated Shor's Algorithm on a quantum computer. Shor's Algorithm is
a method for finding the prime factors of numbers (which plays an intrinsic role in cryptography). They used a 7-qubit computer to find
the factors of 15. The computer correctly deduced that the prime factors were 3 and 5.
2005
The Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Innsbruck announced that scientists had created the
first qubyte, or series of 8 qubits, using ion traps.
2006
Scientists in Waterloo and Massachusetts devised methods for quantum control on a 12-qubit system. Quantum control becomes more
complex as systems employ more qubits.
2007
Canadian startup company D-Wave demonstrated a 16-qubit quantum computer. The computer solved asudoku puzzle and other
pattern matching problems. The company claims it will produce practical systems by 2008. Skeptics believe practical quantum
computers are still decades away, that the system D-Wave has created isn't scaleable, and that many of the claims on D-Wave's Web
site are simply impossible (or at least impossible to know for certain given our understanding of quantum mechanics).
If functional quantum computers can be built, they will be valuable in factoring large numbers, and therefore extremely useful for
decoding and encoding secret information. If one were to be built today, no information on the Internet would be safe. Our current
methods of encryption are simple compared to the complicated methods possible in quantum computers. Quantum computers could
also be used to search large databases in a fraction of the time that it would take a conventional computer. Other applications could
include using quantum computers to study quantum mechanics, or even to design other quantum computers.
But quantum computing is still in its early stages of development, and many computer scientists believe the technology needed to
create a practical quantum computer is years away. Quantum computers must have at least several dozen qubits to be able to solve
real-world problems, and thus serve as a viable computing method.

a quantum computer with qubits can be in an arbitrary superposition of up to different states simultaneously (this compares to
a normal computer that can only be in one of these states at any one time).

quantum computing relies on quantum physics by taking advantage of certain quantum physics properties of atoms or nuclei that allow them to
work together as quantum bits, or qubits, to be the computer's processor and memory. By interacting with each other while being isolated from
the external environment, qubits can perform certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers.
Qubits do not rely on the traditional binary nature of computing. While traditional computers encode information into bits using binary numbers,
either a 0 or 1, and can only do calculations on one set of numbers at once, quantum computers encode information as a series of quantum-
mechanical states such as spin directions of electrons or polarization orientations of a photon that might represent a 1 or a 0, might represent a
combination of the two or might represent a number expressing that the state of the qubit is somewhere between 1 and 0, or a superposition of
many different numbers at once. A quantum computer can do an arbitrary reversible classical computation on all the numbers simultaneously,
which a binary system cannot do, and also has some ability to produce interference between various different numbers. By doing a computation
on many different numbers at once, then interfering the results to get a single answer, a quantum computer has the potential to be much more
powerful than a classical computer of the same size. In using only a single processing unit, a quantum computer can naturally perform myriad
operations in parallel.




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intro.html

May 20, 2011, D-Wave Systems is marketing a $10,000,000 Quantum Computer named "D-Wave One" with a 128-qubit (quantum bit)
chipset that performs just a single taskdiscrete optimization
D-Waves computer is designed to solve what are called combinatorial optimization problems. The classic example is figuring out the
most efficient route for a traveling salesman going to multiple destinations. Theres no mathematical shortcut that computers can take to
solve combinatorial optimization problems. They have to use brute force: Simply check all possible combinations. The trouble is, the
number of possibilities explodes exponentially with the problem size. For example, if you have six destinations, there are 64 possible
combinations. If you have 20 destinations, there are 1,048,576 possible combinations.
D-Waves next-generation computer is designed to handle problems with as many as 512 variables. In theory, that lets you solve
problems involving two to the 512 possible combinations, and a problem of that size is beyond the reach of any classical computer that
could ever be built. Its bigger than the number of atoms in the universe, Rose says. It doesnt matter how big a supercomputer you
make.

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