> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> - From PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
> The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
> Number 367 April 15, 1998 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
>
> A SEARCH ENGINE THAT EMPLOYS QUANTUM WEIRDNESS
> has been experimentally demonstrated, allowing researchers
> to successfully find one of four possible pieces of data
> in a single computational step, rather than the 2.25 steps it takes
> traditional computers on average.
[SNIP]
Quantum Electronics is an exciting field with tremendous promise, but what
this article really shows is the quantum electronics is still in its early
lab phase. It's not really useful even for scientific instrumentation,
and is certiainly not yet reduced to engineering practice. a lot of
research and development is needed before we will get the first
practical quantum computer, even using lithograghic techniques.
This is the reason that I feel that nanomechanical computers will
be built before nanoelectronic computers. At the nano scale,
quantum effects will dominate dlassical effects, so to build
a nanoelectronic computer, we'll have to learn both the
engineerong dicipline of molecular nanotechnology and the
science and engineering of quantum electronic computing.
at this point, it is not clear what the minimum size of a
quantum electronic is, or what the minimum spacing of
the connections will be.
By contrast, rod logic is better understood. The minimum
device sizes are on the order of 5 cubic nm.