Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Re:79% accuracy ... (Score:5, Insightful)
79% accurate. That's pretty useless.
Not useless at all, just have it solve the same problem 5 or 15 times and go with the answer that it gives most often. Plus, for some problems it's much easier to verify an answer than to come up with it -- for those problems, just pair it with a normal computer to check the answers, and keep trying until it says the answer is right.
How do they know? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm curious how they could possibly know that it operated correctly 79% of the time, since the underlying quantum state isn't observable. You could say it produced the 'correct' results 79% of the time, but that's not the same as saying it operated correctly 79% of the time; it's very possible for a quantum computer to operate incorrectly and still produce the right result, through sheer random chance.
I suppose I could read the paper.
Ha ha (Score:2, Insightful)
Can you imagine the accuracy of a Beowulf cluster of that?
Re:79% accuracy ... (Score:0, Insightful)
you noticed that the article you are quoting is satire right?