Question: If building a really fast computer, made out of laser beams, how long would you estimate it would take to become a popular item in every house?

Chris Mansell answered on 17 Jun 2013:

Hi jessicaaa,

I think the first people who use quantum computers will be the military, government organisations and large companies. There is a company called D-wave systems who claim to have built a quantum computer out of superconductors. They have sold one of their devices to Lockhead Martin, a defense contractor in America. NASA and Google have put their money together to buy one and share it between themselves. Academic scientists are still quite skeptical about wheter D-wave’s device actually operates in a quantum-mechanical way. Some maybe this is the first commercial quantum computer and maybe it isn’t.

The general consensus in the quantum physics community is that quantum computers will take at least one decade to go from being protypes to being really useful devices.

What I have in my lab (atoms and laser beams) may not be a very good way to build a really fast computer. However, we are doing our best to see how far we can push this line of research.

It is hard to forsee the future. There could be unexpected breakthroughs or there could be unforseen problems and difficulties.

I think that when I reach retirement age, I would like to volunteer in a museum for quantum computers and tell all the youngsters, “back in my day, we thought quantum computers would be like …” and they’d laugh because things didn’t really turn out that way.