Quantum computing more practical now?

[Kedas]

http://dwave.wordpress.com/2007/01/19/quantum-computing-demo-announcement/

The Orion system is a hardware accelerator designed to solve a particular NP-complete problem called the two dimensional Ising model in a magnetic field. It is built around a 16-qubit superconducting adiabatic quantum computer processor. The system is designed to be used in concert with a conventional front end for any application that requires the solution of an NP-complete problem.

 

I'm curious...

 

Some info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-complete

http://www.nada.kth.se/%7Eviggo/problemlist/compendium.html

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0206/0206003.pdf

[insane_alien]

its far from practical, but we are definitely getting closer to feasible quantum computers. once we have quantum computers capable of performing meaningful functions i think that they will only be available to universities and large corporations/governments and act more like a mainframe/server farm rather than workstations. probably take several decades after that to get a quantum laptop or something

[Corillian]

At my school, the so-called "gifted and talented" leader/teacher, Mr Salt (who reminds me of Father Christmas), while i was helping to teach 10-year-olds quadratic equations, (they are smart-almost as fast as me, and im 15), told us that two scientists have created the first quantum computer. He also said that it is 1000 times more powerful than the most powerful "normal" computer (I presume this is the IBM machine built, which the processor runs at 400Ghz at room temperature) but only lasts for one second, is this true, or have I, once again, got this wrong?

[GutZ]

I dont know depends on what you consider being more "poweriful" to be, I don't think it can be compared to raw physical CPU speed and such. I could be wrong though.

[Corillian]

I probably mean 1000 times faster, it was last friday.

[insane_alien]

you can't compare quantum computers and normal computers, they have totally different architectires and basic principles(not that there is anything basic about quantum computing)

 

also, the current largest supercomputer works ona clock of 800MHz i believe. clockrate has zilch to do with how much raw data it can process. The fact that it has several thousands of these processors is what gives it the oomph.

 

Super computers should be entering the PFLOP range next year(maybe this year) which is a huge amount. we won't be able to work out quantum computers like this since they can already do things these ones can't in a few clock cycles.

[Corillian]

Lol, well luckily im not in their league, the most i can afford is a Intel C2C E6600

[Kedas]

an update:

http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=4&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01returnid=21