

Thinnest silicon-chip wires refuse to go quantum  - nickolai
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21333-thinnest-siliconchip-wires-refuse-to-go-quantum.html

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jxcole
> It could be bad news, though, for the super-fast quantum computers that are
> hoped to come next.

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like this is a very special property of
phosphorous infused nanometer wide wires. It sounds like if you want quantum
effects you could just, you know, not infuse the phosphorous. It's not like
quantum theory has been disproven.

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radarsat1
Is it bad news when quantum computing has bad news? I'm torn on the subject.
There are lots of interesting problems that might be solved or at least
drastically sped up by quantum computing, such as optimization problems in
engineering. However, security, which we generally deem essential in everyday
transactions, depends purely on a lower limit to the time it takes to factor a
large prime using known technologies. Similar for other essentials, such as
privacy and anonymity. Quantum computing would be good in some ways, but
terribly bad in others.

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jerfelix
>> the time it takes to factor a large prime using known technologies.

This is a common misconception (or perhaps common typo). Factoring large
primes is trivial. It's those pesky composite numbers that are the product of
two large primes that contribute to the strength of cryptography.

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chc
In fact, easy factorization is the _definition_ of a prime number. Given a
prime number X, we know immediately that it has only two factors: 1 and X.

