Quantum Chip Helps Crack Code

Experimental chip does part of code-cracking quantum algorithm.

Using four photons that pass through a sequence of quantum logic gates, the optical circuit helped find the prime factors of the number 15. While the researchers showed that it was possible to solve for the factors, the chip itself didn’t just spit out 5 and 3. Instead, it came up with an answer to the ”order-finding routine,” the ”computationally hard” part of Shor’s algorithm that requires a quantum calculation to solve the problem in a reasonable amount of time.

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