Quantum Computer

           Since the massive amount of processing power generated by computer manufacturers has not yet been able to quench our thirst for speed and computing capacity.Will we ever have the amount of computing power we need or want???            So next step will be to create quantum computers, which will harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks. Quantum computers have the potential to perform certain calculations significantly faster than any silicon-based computer. The idea of a computational device based on quantum mechanics was first explored in the 1970's and early 1980's by physicists and computer scientists such as Charles H. Bennett of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center,, David Deutsch of the University of Oxford, and Richard P. Feynman of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).            The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties can be used to represent and structure data, and that quantum mechanisms can be devised and built to perform operations with this data.            Today's computers, work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: 0 or 1. Quantum computers aren't limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in superposition. Qubits(quantum binary digits) represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their respective control devices that are working together to act as computer memory and a processor. Because a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputers.            A 30-qubit quantum computer would equal the processing power of a conventional computer that could run at 10 teraflops (trillions of floating-point operations per second). Today's typical desktop computers run at speeds measured in gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second).            In future Quantum computers will replace silicon chips, just like the transistor once replaced the vacuum tube.Now IBM and some of the companies have made on going research in Quantum computers.            Quantum computing is still in its early stages of development, and many computer scientists believe the technology needed to create a practical quantum computer is years away. But scientists have already built basic quantum computers that can perform certain calculations; but a practical quantum computer is still years away.