It is no about 30 years ago that we are thinking about the possibility to build a quantum computer.
According to some scientist they manage to build a working prototype
but the performance of my old Spectrum Sinclair is better.
But if it is really their it can do a thousands of calculations at the same time. So that is really fasten seat belts.
Considering my age I can not wait a other 30 years or so
I love it to talk about qbits and qbytes .
And will linux run on it ?
So can anybody tell me when can we really use such a computer ?


regards


ron

I can almost guarantee, if a truly quantum computer comes out, it won't be using a statically typed language like C or assembler to interface with the hardware. More than likely the Unununium project (a nearly-pure Python OS) may get resurrected, or they'll buckle down and write a {Common Lisp|Scheme}-based OS; something in a language that can be modified by itself, without having to be recompiled or rely on user interaction (or, at least, excessive amounts of user interaction).

I'm questioning how reliable these things are gonna be. I'm thinking not very. I don't think the idea will go too far, but who knows. I think most probably a better system will pass this one while it's in development.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

A "quantum computer" is a pretty broad term. Sort of like "a light emittor", which could mean a thousand things that are not even near each other.. No offense meant, but things like that just bump into my eye media takes a term that isn't polished, makes it hot and sells it to the masses..and all of a sudden everybody is talking about quantum computers and all, without knowing what exactly they are or in any case, where the name comes from. A "quantum" means generally something that is limited or of known size; for example energy levels can be quantized, which simply means that between two energies there isn't just a continuum of energy (i.e. endless number of "energy levels" that differ from each other close to none), but instead there is a certain number of energy levels. This is the basic thing behind "quantum physics", "quantum mechanics" and all other quantum-something things, and when considered closely, leads to some astonishing things (or things that at first look astonishing).

But if we're not picky about it, I don't think a "quantum computer" that makes a today's computer look like an abacus will be built too soon. And probably before it's finished people have a better idea that is halfway finished, and by the time both of them are old, there's still a flame war going on about which OS is the best for that computer

If I'm not mistaken, some sort of models of circuits already exist that use light instead of electricity to transform information. Last time I remember reading, folks were wondering about how to build logic ports (and apparently there were a few good ideas about that) that worked well, and that a chip that used light instead of electric current to transform information could be considerably faster than the ones we use today..not sure what is going on on that front today, but that didn't either sound like something I'm going to buy in the years coming. And that isn't exactly quantum physics either..more like "new optics".

Well after reading a lot of books about Quantum theory I do have a idea what it is all about
But the problem is that even the scientist are more or less confused about quantum theory
An other thing is that media jumps on certain things and blow it up

all the best

Cool stuffs. It is very frequent to do this, with CLUSTER. This is typically what is doing Google, maybe you may ask them if they cannot share you bit of CPU they have. They have more than enough They "officially published" that they dont want any kind of crap computer or times "X100" when/if it can be replaced with a single one very " CPU " !

try Debian or Fedora for the cluster (advice):
http://debianclusters.cs.uni.edu/index.php/Main_Page

You can make it up, but I am not sure you'll manage ... well, you know such calculations are always far from reality.
Are you gonna start from Schrodinger equation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation or further ?
For Wave propagations applications? It's very frequent to do this with a min 100 machines.