The First Quantum Computer? 2008

A com­pany going by the moniker of D-Wave is let­ting it be known that they will pro­duce the world’s first quan­tum com­puter in 2008. Quan­tum machines, a sci-fi sta­ple along with nan­otech, would not rely on the tra­di­tional bits that today’s com­put­ers oper­ate with, but qubits (quan­tum bits), com­put­ing at the mol­e­c­u­lar level. Take a tea­spoon, fill it with qubits, and you have IBM’s Deep Blue to the tril­lionth power. We’ll see if it hap­pens, but if it turns out to be vapor­ware like Duke Nukem For­ever, don’t be surprised.

Of course, these com­put­ers would have some phys­i­cal draw­backs in the begin­ning, such as hav­ing at its heart an ana­logue chip which would have to be cooled with liq­uid helium to – 269 °C — just 4 °C shy of absolute zero. And it’s not like you’ll be play­ing BF2 any­time soon on one of these mofos. D-Wave expects to sell com­pu­ta­tional ser­vices, not quan­tum hard­ware, which I’m guess­ing in the short term would help them make back some of that R&D budget.