The device in the photomicrograph was used to run the first solid-state
demonstration of Shor's algorithm. It is made up of four phase qubits
and five superconducting resonators, for a total of nine engineered
quantum elements. The quantum processor measures one-quarter
inch square. Credit: UCSB.
The US is deploying quantum computer that will be a game changer in a lot of ways, and certainly with respect to computer security.
Unlike today’s computers, which work with 0 and 1, quantum computers rely on quantum processes such as supersposition and entanglement, and instead of bits, uses quantum bits, or qubits. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), quantum computation utilizes quantum properties to represent data and perform operations on these data – and the computation power grows enormously. For example, factoring out a number with 600 digits would take a supercomputer longer than the age of the universe, while with a quantum computer, it could take only a couple of hours.
The project is based on the recent finding of a group of researchers at UC Santa Barbara which designed and fabricated a quantum processor capable of factoring a composite number - in this case the number 15 - into its constituent prime factors, 3 and 5.
"Fifteen is a small number, but what's important is we've shown that we can run a version of Peter Shor's prime factoring algorithm on a solid state quantum processor. This is really exciting and has never been done before," said Erik Lucero, the paper's lead author.
"What is important is that the concepts used in factoring this small number remain the same when factoring much larger numbers," said Andrew Cleland, a professor of physics at UCSB and a collaborator on the experiment. "We just need to scale up the size of this processor to something much larger. This won't be easy, but the path forward is clear."
"Anytime you send a secure transmission - like your credit card information - you are relying on security that is based on the fact that it's really hard to find the prime factors of large numbers,"
"A quantum computer can solve this problem faster than a classical computer by about 15 orders of magnitude," said Lucero. "This has widespread effect. A quantum computer will be a game changer in a lot of ways, and certainly with respect to computer security."
So, if quantum computing makes RSA encryption no longer secure, what will replace it? The answer, Lucero said, is quantum cryptography. "It's not only harder to break, but it allows you to know if someone has been eavesdropping, or listening in on your transmission. Imagine someone wiretapping your phone, but now, every time that person tries to listen in on your conversation, the audio gets jumbled. With quantum cryptography, if someone tries to extract information, it changes the system, and both the transmitter and the receiver are aware of it."
This is a big tool in the hand of a good and a bad man.
