Google, NASA Buy D-Wave 2, a Quantum Computer.

[TechFan@ic]

D-Wave is the only company in the world that commercially sells quantum computers, NASA, google & USRA have cooporated to install this computer to aid in language translation, image & voice recognition.
NASA has also stated that it will explore the computer's capability at "machine learning" or artificial intelligence where a robot can make rational decisions & learn from previous experiences like humans do.

This quantum computer uses an alternative model :

The D-Wave computer is unusual because it uses quantum bits (qubits) — bits that can exist in two states, on and off, simultaneously — to speed up calculations, and because it does not operate on the normal 'gate' model of computing, whereby logic gates are used to manipulate those bits. Instead, it is an 'adiabatic' computer, which reads out the ground state of its qubits to find a solution. The academic community has favoured the gate model, which has a better-developed theory behind it. But the adiabatic model has proven much easier to build, allowing D-Wave to double its processor size every year. The D-Wave Two has 512 qubits.

Read more here.

[LIGISTX]

Aren't quantum computers suppose to be able to just walk through any and all encryption if built properly? Or at least that was what I remember hearing from years ago.

[yaitsbilly]

I have so much to learn!!!! 

[Ashiataka]

Aren't quantum computers suppose to be able to just walk through any and all encryption if built properly? Or at least that was what I remember hearing from years ago.

 

No. This is not the case. There are algorithms that run faster on quantum computers, however there is only one (Shor's prime factorisation algorithm) that has a super polynomial speed up. I believe at the moment the largest number that has been factorised using this algorithm in a quantum system is 21 - hardly concerning. 

 

Anyway, the point is that each algorithm requires specific hardware, it would be like programming by physically soldering together transistors in the right order - this is not a general purpose device. Don't worry. Your bank account passwords are safe.

 

For now.

[LIGISTX]

HAHA. OK, that makes some sense, and makes me not worry so much :)

[CyberneticTitan]

One small step for man, one giant leap for skynet.

[McMitch]

The good news is that n qubits has the same power as 2^n bits. The bad news is that quantum computers will not work for all normal algoriths, usually only quantum algorithms...