Quote:
Originally Posted by roddierod
I would guess that it is a safe bet that the military of some super secret organization has a proto-type running now.
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I wouldn't put it past them. As mentioned, 64bit has been around since the 60s (as far as we know
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ai-danno
There are so many factors involved with bringing Quantum Computing to the desktop that it's likely not going to happen in our lifetime in any meaningful mass commercial way.
Not only are there issues of hardware design, but even if those were figured out, the scale of manufacturing required to bring down the pricepoint to where you would find these devices on your desk is so large that I think that's an insurmountable problem in the forseeable future.
Then you have the software developers. Sure, you will have a few that can actually program in this new environment in a slightly meaningful way, but to port the existing worldwide libraries of software into QC seems a bit far-fetched, much less retrain mass numbers of developers to stop programming with 'traditional' techniques and move to QC programming.
And given the edge that QC gives governments over people and corporations and other governments in areas like encryption and weapons testing simulations, its likely (to me) that they will want to not spread the wealth of QC to the masses for as long as they can help it.
Do I fear it? Nope. Do I expect to ever sit down with a MacBook QC Pro in my lifetime? Nope.
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Too big? I guess. We're doing wonders with what we have and I guess people would resist a size increase for more features (although behaviour regarding mobile phones seems to suggest the opposite).
Will we ever get it as a desktop? If you're working for the government, in cryptography, in a company with a technology budget large enough to buy a few small islands in the pacific, maybe. At a university ... maybe, depending on what you do. For home use? As much as I hope, which I suspect is responsibel for my "maybe," I doubt it.