As far as we know, its definitely just "we got a step closer". The advances that we will need to make about our understanding of quantum systems are probably significant, but quantum computers themselves don't seem that promising as of now for one important reason - we have had a very hard time coming up with algorithms that run faster on quantum computers (asymptotically) compared to classical computers. The only significant ones right now are Shor's algorithm (factoring numbers in log(n)^3 time) and Grover Search (searching through N unsorted values in sqrt(n) time). So it's definitely a niche for now, but with two qualifications:
1. Search is a very important niche, it comes up everywhere and could effectively let us say "fuck it, lets brute force it" in a lot of places where we currently use complex algorithms.
2. The knowledge that we gain while trying to build one will probably be useful somewhere.
As for "could propel". There is a set of five criteria (or 7 if you consider networking) called the DiVincenzo criteria that roughly state the properties a system needs to satisfy to be a viable quantum computer. One of these is "long decoherence times compared to gate operation times", which means how long the system of qubits can store quantum information before the noisy environment collapses it to classical information. We compare this to gate operation times because the relative times are what is important. If you have a decoherence time of 2 seconds, but it takes 3 seconds for a CNOT gate to operate, its not very useful. I don't know about the gate operation times of quantum computers based on diamonds. Even so, decoherence times are usually on the order of ms, so a 2 second time is probably a very significant achievement in that criterion. That's also been one of the difficult criteria to crack, so that adds to it. Additionally, theres no need to use this medium as the "RAM" or cache of a computer, this could potentially be used as the equivalent of a HDD on a quantum computer.
Quantum computers are used in production, as you say in a complete niche. Lockheed Martin bought a quantum computer (and associated research & development) from D-Wave for use in their "most complex computations". [1]
There's no further notice of what Lockheed has done with it, but at least there's one quantum computer in private hands designed to do production work.
Comments
Can someone maybe describe the details of "could propel" and what exactly "reality" mean?
I've always been told "when quantum computers become reality you can forget about everything you learned on computer science".
For me reality would be that one can use it in production, even if it's a complete niche.
In other words is it "we got a step closer" or "we potentially solved our only (major) problem"?
As far as we know, its definitely just "we got a step closer". The advances that we will need to make about our understanding of quantum systems are probably significant, but quantum computers themselves don't seem that promising as of now for one important reason - we have had a very hard time coming up with algorithms that run faster on quantum computers (asymptotically) compared to classical computers. The only significant ones right now are Shor's algorithm (factoring numbers in log(n)^3 time) and Grover Search (searching through N unsorted values in sqrt(n) time). So it's definitely a niche for now, but with two qualifications: 1. Search is a very important niche, it comes up everywhere and could effectively let us say "fuck it, lets brute force it" in a lot of places where we currently use complex algorithms. 2. The knowledge that we gain while trying to build one will probably be useful somewhere.
As for "could propel". There is a set of five criteria (or 7 if you consider networking) called the DiVincenzo criteria that roughly state the properties a system needs to satisfy to be a viable quantum computer. One of these is "long decoherence times compared to gate operation times", which means how long the system of qubits can store quantum information before the noisy environment collapses it to classical information. We compare this to gate operation times because the relative times are what is important. If you have a decoherence time of 2 seconds, but it takes 3 seconds for a CNOT gate to operate, its not very useful. I don't know about the gate operation times of quantum computers based on diamonds. Even so, decoherence times are usually on the order of ms, so a 2 second time is probably a very significant achievement in that criterion. That's also been one of the difficult criteria to crack, so that adds to it. Additionally, theres no need to use this medium as the "RAM" or cache of a computer, this could potentially be used as the equivalent of a HDD on a quantum computer.
Quantum computers are used in production, as you say in a complete niche. Lockheed Martin bought a quantum computer (and associated research & development) from D-Wave for use in their "most complex computations". [1]
There's no further notice of what Lockheed has done with it, but at least there's one quantum computer in private hands designed to do production work.
[1] http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/d-wave-systems-sells...
in my understanding the jury is still out on whether D-Wave actually has a quantum computer or not, e.g. http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954