Programmable Quantum Computer
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO. have built a quantum computer that is programmable. Unlike previous quantum computers, which were mostly restricted to specific tasks, this computer was able to run 160 different tasks chosen at random by the researchers. It was said to be accurate only 79 percent of the time (estimates are that it must be 99.99% accurate to be useful), but it’s a great next step.
“What’s most impressive and important is that they did it in the way that can be applied to a larger-scale system,” says Blinov, of the University of Washington in Seattle. “The very same techniques they’ve used for two qubits can be applied to much larger systems.”
(Fer chrissakes people, read the original article already, and the original paper itself if you can. My little summary is almost certainly wildly inaccurate, as all short summaries of science articles probably are.)