Quantum computing, please explain

[Colbaker]

Could someone please explain to me what differences quantum computing will make to personal computers and their performance/application?

For research purposes

 

[Colbaker]

A little googling and it seems we are on the cusp of having a quantum processor which is a good start to complete quantum computing, As said a quantum processor uses quantum bits or qubits to process data, the difference is that it can act as both a 0 and 1 at the same time, the issues they are having is with error control, as there is a lot more chance in errors occurring at a quantum level more parity is required.

Currently they have a processor that is 4 qubits in size and soon they expect it to be 10, it is expected that The performance will scale rapidly with the amount of qubits.

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811199

That's for processors, this should also mean that storage capacitywill be greatly improved, if they ever find a way to use quantum entanglement to transfer data and can control the outcome then that will change everything, quantum entanglement is when I particle has a link with another particle, these particles could be millions of miles apart, when one particle is changed the other one of the entangled pair also changes at exactly the same time, imagine a computer using this method to transfer data internally and instantly, also imagine if this could be used for transferring data over the Internet, computing would have no bottlenecks and all data will be instant.

 

[Colbaker]

There's some interesting research going on looking to develop storage materials that can store data in 3 different states (as in 0, 1 and 2, instead of just 0 and 1). Obviously this would need a lot of different software to work with, but it would lead to huge increases in data capacity.

They would have to go from binary 0,1 to decimal 0 to 9, I believe some super computers can do this now anyway.