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"...a team led by researchers at Microsoft have said a working, useful quantum computing system finally seems to be within reach.
The team just published a paper about their scheme on the preprint server arXiv, and it predicts a working quantum computer in the next 10 years.
"Recent improvements in control of quantum systems make it seem feasible to finally build a quantum computer," the researchers write in their study.
This is a contentious announcement, as a story at The Register points out, because a company called D-Wave claims to have built the first quantum computer (pictured above). However, research published last year demonstrated that D-Wave's prototype was no faster than some regular computers. D-Wave disagrees, and said the researchers did not fairly test the computer.
The new study suggests a "hybrid" quantum computer — one embedded in a traditional, silicon-based computer — could process simulations that would be useful to materials scientists, for example. And their hybrid model, the researchers write, could also help solve a lot of the problems that have plagued efforts to build effective quantum computers."