<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 2:33 PM, BillK </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:pharos@gmail.com" target="_blank">pharos@gmail.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​>​</div>Well, nobody has built a proper quantum computer yet, (not counting<br>
D-Wave), so we don't know yet.<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ </div>Current estimate is 4 to 5 years.<br></blockquote><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4">A D-wave type machine might be able to solve some problems and do so quantum mechanically but it wouldn't be Turing complete and be able to work on any problem as a general purpose computer can. Google and IBM have set there sights higher and are working on a true Turing complete Quantum Computer that would use <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​s​</div>uperconducting loops. Microsoft is working on the most advanced and riskiest design of all, a Topological Quantum Computer; it would use 2 dimensional<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ </div>quasi<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​​</div>particles called non-abelian anyons.</font></div><div><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​</div><font size="4">The huge advantage non-abelian anyons<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ </div>ha<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ve​</div> is that they would be vastly less <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​s​</div>susceptible to <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​​</div>quantum decoherence<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ </div>than anything else, so much so that a <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​</div>Topological Quantum Computer might be able to work at room temperature. <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​Not only do you need to cool ​a </div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">superconducting loop<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ but because of ​</div></span><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​​</div>quantum decoherence<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ it only produces the correct results about 99.9% of the time. A large quantum computer would need a about ten nines so Google and IBM's machine would need massive amounts of expensive quantum error correcting circuitry. Microsoft's N</div>on-abelian anyons<font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font><div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">​would give you about seven nines of precision right at the start so much less </font></div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">correcting circuitry<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ would be needed​</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​.​</div></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​T​</div></span><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">he only disadvantage is that physicists are only 95% certain that </div>non-abelian anyons<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">​ exist.</div></font></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></font></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> John K Clark</div></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br><br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail-HOEnZb"><div class="gmail-h5"><br>
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