Originally posted by Astner
The alleged quantum computer D-wave is special designed for a certain type of combinatoric optimization problems, and because of that isn't able to break modern encryption. The reason I'm reserved is because there's a lot of skepticism surrounding the information revealed, which suggests that D-wave behaves more like a specialized classical computer. But it's good that we have a lot of investors pushing the study of its technology and architecture.Quantum computing is the processing of 0😖 and 1😖 using quantum mechanical systems where superposition and entanglement have important roles. The systems and physics used in quantum computing is fundamentally different from a classical computer, and can preform certain tasks classical computer have difficulties with. The strength of a quantum computer isn't that it makes more computations per second, but because it uses processing methods (through quantum physics) not available to a classical computer.
This topic isn't nearly as abstract as Badabing is making it seem, anything general can be outlined in layman terms. It's first when you try to figure out stuff about particular computation methods that things have to get a bit technical.
So have we achieved quantum computing power?
Originally posted by cdtm
Why do they say indirect measurements affect outcome in quantum experiments?I assume when they mentioned indirect measuring, they mean techniques that measure a particle, without interacting with it in any way?
An indirect measurement of a system is the measurement of a separate system coupled to the former system. It does influence the system, but if you've bothered creating such a system you've done so to limit the affect of the interaction, generally this also means that you'll also receive less information.
Originally posted by BrolyBlack
So have we achieved quantum computing power?