Quantum computers '10 years off'
Professor Chris Bishop, chief research scientist at Microsoft Research's Cambridge facility, believes that quantum computers 'with non trivial numbers of bits' will be developed within the next 10 years.
"We used to say quantum computers were 30 years off, but things are getting more interesting," he noted.
Amongst the first applications for quantum computers will be in search engines; one reason for Microsoft's interest. Prof Bishop said quantum computers will be able to answer questions in 'a reasonable time where conventional computing can't'.
"However," said Prof Bishop, "these computers may need thousands of qbits because of the need to run error correction. At the moment, the technology doesn't scale, but when that is worked out, devices with 1000 quantum bits may not be too much harder."