Spencer Lowell/Trunk Archive
Summary.
In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor introduced a quantum-computing algorithm that could reduce the time it takes to find the prime factors of large numbers from billions of years using a conventional transistor-based computer to a few days using a quantum computer. This was an enormous breakthrough, because prime factorization is the foundation for much of our present encryption and information security infrastructure. Seven years later, IBM scientists successfully demonstrated the algorithm on a quantum machine—albeit a very small one—for the first time, proving that quantum computers could be built and that Shor’s algorithm could be implemented.