From ASEE First Bell July 1, 2009
The New Haven Register (6/30, Stannard) reported, “A team of Yale University physicists has achieved a major advance toward creating an elusive superfast quantum computer that would assist research in fields such as high-level encryption” by creating “the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor.” While “what the processor does has been achieved before,” the difference, according to the researchers, “is that they’ve created a simple processor that could be made using ‘conventional fabrication technology’…that could be ‘scaled up’ to become more powerful and conceivably could be manufactured.” Robert Schoelkopf, professor of applied physics and physics at Yale, explained, “Our processor can perform only a few very simple quantum tasks. … But this is the first time they’ve been possible in an all-electronic device that looks and feels much more like a regular microprocessor.”