Quantum Computing Is Exciting and Important--Really!
Charles Day · Computing in Science & Engineering · 2007
Quantum computing, say its champions, promises prodigious power. its basic currency, the qubit, exists in an on/off limbo until it's read out, so if you could operate on kqubits, a potentially vast space of 2kvalues opens up for computation. the fundamental operation on qubits is a rotation. Combine the rotations, and you have logic gates. Combine the logic gates, and you have algorithms. In principle, these algorithms can perform calculations far beyond classical computing's conceivable reach