quantum computer has been made

[P3nT4gR4m]

This is way ahead of most predictions I've heard

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/02/d_wave_gets_17_million_funding/

[LMNO]

The quantum computer has gotten tons of funding on the basis of a few unverifiable claims.



Fixxxored.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Haha so it's a scam? I'm even moar impressed with this thing now 

[LMNO]

Not a scam, but nowhere near viable, either.

[Cain]

As I see it....its tons of funding for something that will either be

a) totally awesome
b) fail, but by process of elimination tell us more about the Universe
c) fail.  Complete and utter FAIL,

[Cramulus]

Venture capitalists invest their money in odd things sometimes, but I don't think this project would have gotten $17m if it were totally infeasable.

And if the technology is possible, this is the first step to getting there. So I'm rooting for them.

[Jasper]

They've got something up their sleeve. 

/Hunch

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Well, IIRC the company has a working Quantum Computer, but its very very small (by Quantum 'standards'). The current 'vaporware' is their position that they can scale it to something much larger (in the article it says they currently have a working 28QBit and are promising 1024 Qbits). So basically the current quantum computer can measure 4²⁸ states. They are promising 4¹⁰²⁴ .

I wouldn't doubt that at some point in the next 3 years, we'll hit that level (if not before due to some breakthrough). However, quantum computing is useful in some pretty specific areas, but not exactly the next big thing to hit the desktop. From an encryption perspective however, there are several exciting applications and some rather scary risks.

Current "strong cryptography" which protects your CCN at companies is (at best) probably 256-bit AES. This means that there are 2²⁵⁶ possible combination options for the encryption key. That places "brute force" attacks pretty much out of the realm of possibility. Once quantum computers become available, we would be dealing with 4^{x Qbits} possible states which would render pretty much all encryption on the market useless.

There is also a Quantum encryption system which relies mostly on the whole entanglement phenomenon. Then "spin up"/ "spin down" are treated as binary 1/0. This doesn't give us more in horsepower for calculations... but it does (at least in theory) provide a secure way to send binary data from point A to point B without risk of eavesdropping.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Am I the only one who has a really hard time taking seriously any reporting from the UK?

[Cain]

No, and I live here.

I read about Quantumn Encryption in New Scientist and I have to say, if it can be done, at a feasible cost....well then, wow.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yeah, I think that currently available products on the market only use quanta in key distribution and still use traditional measures for the actual encryption and decryption. I don't think anything lse has actually escaped from the lab.

[Requia ☣]

Quantum decryption is less scary than it sounds, moving from 128 bit to 256 or 512 bit will secure most of the algorithms.   (RSA and DSA in the specific can be protected this way, important, since those are the only two public key algorithms right now).

Of course, you can expect to see another government push to limit cryptography to something the gov is able to crack.

[LMNO]

Doesn't a lot of this depend on superconductors, which have to be extremely cold to work?

It seems the amount of energy required here is enormous.

[Triple Zero]

From an encryption perspective however, there are several exciting applications and some rather scary risks.

Current "strong cryptography" which protects your CCN at companies is (at best) probably 256-bit AES. This means that there are 2²⁵⁶ possible combination options for the encryption key. That places "brute force" attacks pretty much out of the realm of possibility. Once quantum computers become available, we would be dealing with 4^{x Qbits} possible states which would render pretty much all encryption on the market useless.

for the record, this is -- JUST LIKE EVERY FUCKING TIME ANYBODY SAYS ANYTHING EVER ABOUT QUANTUM AS I KEEP FUCKING REPEATING OVER AND OVER, JUST FUCKING FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT QUANTUM ALREADY* -- what everybody thinks, but not actually how a quantum computer would go about solving "hard" encryption.

linky, for how it actually works:
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208

*excuse the ranting, no offense meant, but it does seem to get a littlebit tedious don't you agree?

There is also a Quantum encryption system which relies mostly on the whole entanglement phenomenon. Then "spin up"/ "spin down" are treated as binary 1/0. This doesn't give us more in horsepower for calculations... but it does (at least in theory) provide a secure way to send binary data from point A to point B without risk of eavesdropping.

and this, while having something to do with "quantum", has nothing at all to do with "quantum computing".

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Quantum decryption is less scary than it sounds, moving from 128 bit to 256 or 512 bit will secure most of the algorithms.   (RSA and DSA in the specific can be protected this way, important, since those are the only two public key algorithms right now).

Of course, you can expect to see another government push to limit cryptography to something the gov is able to crack.

I think you got a wee mixup. Secure public-key algorithms run in the 1024-2048 bit range, secure symmetric/private key algorithms run in the 128/256/512 bit range.

The equivalent strength of RSA 1024-bit is about 80-bits symmetric and would not be considered secure by today's standards, in fact RSA stated that 1024-bit keys would likely be made irrelevant sometime in this decade.

As for quantum computing, if we use only the brute force algorithms available today, then yes, its not feasible. I was about to go into more detail, but I see Triple Zero has already beat me to it.

TZ: I agree with your post and didn't intend for my three line post to cover the details of quantum computing re encryption.

Also, yes, quantum crypto systems currently available use QP, but are not QC.