Quantum Computing update

[Mithrandir]

We were just discussing this in another thread, and I said I'd let everyone know if I fan across anyting on QC. Guess what showed up on /. today? Turns out a group in Japan has made significant progress here...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/31/014225&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=99

Looks interesting. For those of you who are interested in descrete circuts, this is real progress. It's a CNOT gate! The author is thinking 10+ years away from production. Sounds optomistic today, but if I was working on a grant funded project, I'd be optomistic too.

[Link Antilles]

Wow! That's amazing! I can't wait to see the games on those computers! lol


Ummm... one question, though...
what exactly is a quantum gate?

[Straylight]

This is cool stuff - I can imagine modelling the folding of proteins would be a really sweet use of all that computing power.

If it ever hit the mainstream, the world would be a different place..

[andyroo]

That's pretty cool. Lots of progress has been made.

And Link Antilles to answer you question. Well, logic gates such as AND, OR, and so on can't be reversed. A quantum gate can be reversable this means that there is an equal number of inputs and outputs. The one that's being worked with is called a controlled NOT gate which has two inputs.

This seems to be a bit obscure to me, but its the best I can do with what little I have found. Um, go google?

[Mithrandir]

Well, if you have 'not' and 'and' you can create a NAND gate, from which any logic can emerge. COOL stuff!