SCIENCE SPIN-OFFS

[DDhawk]

Microsoft on quantum computing:
"How a practical quantum computer will ultimately be built is unknown. Possibilities include trapped ions, superconducting devices and isolated spins in semiconductor quantum dots. However, any potential qubit must overcome a large hurdle in order to be practical for quantum computing, Manfra said.
"A big challenge in quantum computing is that qubits interact with their environment and are vulnerable to decoherence, or the loss of quantum information before a computation is complete or a result is stored in memory," he said. "There are two approaches to this problem: accept it as a fact of life and try to correct for the errors decoherence introduces or, instead, be clever about the physical platform in which you make your qubit and try to use topology to make it insensitive to environmental noise. The latter is the idea behind topological quantum computing and is what Microsoft is pursuing."
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q2/purdue-professor-receives-multimillion-dollar-funding-to-establish-station-q-purdue,-become-part-of-elite-microsoft-team.html