World’s first commercial quantum computer sold to Lockheed Martin

[R2Y]

The world’s first commercially available quantum computer, which uses principles of quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics, was sold to aerospace, defense and security company Lockheed Martin.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/27/first-quantum-computer-sold/

I wonder how quickly can they break bitcoin encryption... or how fast could they mine 

now seriously....
could this be a risk to bitcoin network?  Look who is the client "Lockheed Martin"

[mewantsbitcoins]

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=10114.0

[kjj]

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size.

If this is even a quantum computer, and it may not be, it is about 1% of the size needed to reduce the strength of SHA256 by half.  So, if it is indeed quantum, and they scale it up by 100, we'll have an urgent need to change to SHA512 in the decade immediately following.

[neotrino]

The problem is not the sha-256 algorithm used for mining but the ECDSA algorithm used for the public-key scheme.

With a quantum computer I could break your private key and steal your money.

Please see this thread:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3008.20

[em3rgentOrdr]

The world’s first commercially available quantum computer, which uses principles of quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics, was sold to aerospace, defense and security company Lockheed Martin.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/27/first-quantum-computer-sold/

I wonder how quickly can they break bitcoin encryption... or how fast could they mine 

now seriously....
could this be a risk to bitcoin network?  Look who is the client "Lockheed Martin"

Don't get too excited.  The first question is, does it actually work?  Judging from the history of the US Military Industrial Complex, Lockhead probably bought an overpriced crappy computer that doesn't work, and the quantum hashing capabilities are probably no better than a i386.

Or I could be wrong.

[zif33rs]

Nasa purchased a 512 qubit D-Wave 2 quantum computer for $15 million.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22554494

"D-Wave Systems has been focused on building machines that exploit a technique called quantum annealing - a way of distilling the optimal mathematical solutions from all the possibilities."


Apparently they work and are here to stay. I think inside 15 years this could be a real issue to sha-256 encryption. I have done some research into this and while at this time I dont feel this poises a threat, in the near future with optimizations and advances I think it very well could.


Anyone care to enlighten me further?