SITE VISIT: Quantum Computing on Cue
Science · 1999
If quantum computers are ever built, they might need only minutes to perform tasks that would take today's fastest supercomputer millions of years. Quantum bits, or qubits, which store and process information, can assume the values of 1 and 0 simultaneously. That means 100 qubits can calculate in just one step a computation that ordinary bits would need to repeat 2100 times. Confused or intrigued? Check out the University of Oxford's Centre for Quantum Computation Web site (http://www.qubit.org/). Besides serving experts, “we try to maintain information which will interest people who simply wonder what quantum computing is all about,” says one of the Web masters, Benjamin Simon.