First Commercial quantum computer - demonstration Tuesday

A landmark in technology will be reached on Tuesday if a Canadian company is succesful in demonstrating a working commercial quantum computer in Mountain View, Canada next week. years ahead of many experts' predictions.

Vancouver-based D-Wave claims to have developed a 16 Qubit quantum computer ( a qubit is the quantum world's version of a digital bit, but which simultaneously encodes 1 and 0, and as a result can encode more information and solve problems more quickly.)

D-Wave's claims have met with some skepticism from the quantum-computing community.

With 16 qubits, it will not have will not yet have the power to perform factoring of the extremely large numbers which underly cryptography. This possibility for quantum computing has IT security firms and spooks afraid their current encryption technologies - but this wouuld require a quantum computer with perhaps hundreds of qubits.

According to a blog a Dr Geordie Rose's who is the CTO for the firm, their plans call for the construction of a 1,000 qubit machine in 2008.

D-Wave will demonstrate two applications for its quantum computer. A pattern-matching problem derived from molecular databases, and the problem of assigning seats to people under constraints, wedding reception style. Its speed at 16 qubits should be roughly similar to standard computers.

The event is being held at the Computer History Museum on Tuesday and it will be filmed and posted to D-Wave's website.