Posted: Wed Aug 22 2001
Quantum Computers On The Horizon
Science writer Nigel Plinth explains it for you

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working together to create a new generation of computers that will offer speeds far beyond anything possible today. In order to achieve this breakthrough velocity they are building the computers from the ground up to utilize quantum effects as the means of storing and manipulating data.

A spokesman for HP told this reporter on Friday that "More's Law is going to reach its natural conclusion because of the physical limitations of present technology. When you get to the atomic scale you can't take it much further,"

By "More's Law" the spokesman refers to the famous adage that "Less is more." This law is why HP decided to utilize the subatomic nature of reality to power the processor of the new mega-super-hyper-computer. The principle is apparently the same as that used by homeopathic medicine. By using smaller and smaller parts of the atom to store data, more and more data can be stored in each bit.

Scientists are calling this super-bit a qubit (quantum bit). Unlike a regular bit, which can be either 0 or 1, a qubit can be both 0 and 1. This means that a single qubyte (8 qubits) can hold any number of numbers in the range 0 to 255. Thus the storage of a single qubyte is a nearly infinite (approximately 98% of infinity) number of bytes.

Since the qubit makes use of the vagaries of quantum mechanics we can expect the qubit to retain its data indefinitely as long as it is never read. Once the qubit is read its probability packet collapses and it becomes either 0 or 1 and simultaneously a cat in Schroedinger's laboratory is killed by poison. This will make reading a very expensive operation and is likely to cause an uproar among animal rights activists.

If this new technology proves as promising as it promises to be, we can look to see in the near future the promise of machines with a single qubyte of storage in which all existing data can be stored. These mega-hyper-giga-super-archives will serve as a repository of all human knowledge and will keep that knowledge safe forever as long as no one tries to read it. This side effect in which the stored data vanishes when you try and read it makes the new technology ideal for highly sensitive information.

As astonishing as the qubit is, it is not a new concept. In fact the qubit has long been a staple of religious artifacts. The famous Holy Ark had a storage capacity of 300 by 50 by 30 qubits. In other words, infinite storage. Yet it was not utilized to its full capacity by its first system administrator, Noah, who stored most of the data in binary. It was later used, however, to store several stone tablets and apparently much more information because it had accumulated a great deal of quantum energy by the time that Nazis opened the lid causing Ronald Lacy's face to melt and Rene Belloq's head to explode.


--Nigel Plint