(June 9, 2015) The quantum computer is a futuristic machine that could operate at speeds even more mind-boggling than the world’s fastest super-computers.
Research
involving physicist Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University offers a new step
towards making quantum computing a reality, through the unique properties of
highly enriched and highly purified silicon.
Quantum
computers right now exist pretty much in physicists’ concepts, and theoretical
research. There are some basic quantum computers in existence, but nobody yet
can build a truly practical one—or really knows how.
Such
computers will harness the powers of atoms and sub-atomic particles (ions,
photons, electrons) to perform memory and processing tasks, thanks to strange
sub-atomic properties.
What
Thewalt and colleagues at Oxford University and in Germany have found is that
their special silicon allows processes to take place and be observed in a solid
state that scientists used to think required a near-perfect vacuum.