How does quantum computing work?

[Vacrin]

how is it that we are able to get atoms to work like bits? and what is their counting system? because simply counting in 1's and 0's doesn't seem to make so much sense when electrons can be doing any number of things when they are not being observed.

i recently watched this


but it didnt explain things as much as i would like it to.

such as having 2 "qubits" is equivalent to 4 bits. can anyone explain? thank you

 

[Simon Bridge]

IBM has an entry level introduction and a QC simulator:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-quant/index.html

 

[Vacrin]

IBM has an entry level introduction and a QC simulator:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-quant/index.html

Thank you i will definitely take a look at it!

 

[Simon Bridge]

Cool - the other half of your question is about what IBM call "exotic hardware".
There have been a lot of different proposals ... i.e.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_quantum_computer

 

[Flatland]

I thought quantum computers did not use 0's and 1's?

 

[Simon Bridge]

@Flatland: see the links.