sciam.com — Today D-Wave unveiled their infamous 16-bit quantum computer. Although this computer is a "proof of concept" it is capable of solving sudoku puzzles a feat most computers have trouble with due to the advanced logic involved. Already plans are in place for a more powerful 1,000-qubit version next year.
Feb 14, 2007 View in Crawl 4
johnmarktFeb 14, 2007
Sudoku? This is what I was expecting to happen when they turned it on this morning:9:37 am: found a cure for cancer10:11 am: made contact with aliens10:42 am: ended world hunger...and then spend the rest of the day figuring out how to satisfy a woman.
javandiverFeb 14, 2007
Glaven!
fluxionFeb 14, 2007
edit: or perhaps sudoku is one of those problems at a large enough scale as well. digg this down, just needed to clarify.
augmentalistFeb 14, 2007
Here is a link with some of the video from this demonstration.<a class="user" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQul2asgXbw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQul2asgXbw</a>
smellinatorFeb 14, 2007
@caleb83:No, Quantum computers are not the same as Quantum Cryptography. See <a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography</a>Quantum Crypto shows the promise of unbreakable crypto.Quantum Computers show the promise of breaking current methods of crypto (like the ability to factor large numbers).
fluxionFeb 15, 2007
@smellinatori believe you're correct, at least i know that Shor's algorithm has been demonstrated on hardware at some point. all i mean to say is that if this hardware were a full-fledged quantum computer, they would have almost certainly demonstrated Shor's algorithm on it, since 16 qubits would a pretty substantial step forward, and would have yeilded tons of publicity for them. if this was capable of running the algorithm, and they were serious about have 1000 qubits soon, the world would be in a frenzy right now. although i believe in these types of implementations, only a rather small subset of the total qubits are actually usable.