Researchers report that they have designed and built a quantum computer from five atoms in an ion trap. The computer uses laser pulses to carry out Shor's algorithm on each atom, to correctly factor ...

Researchers have developed an algorithm that enhances the ability of a quantum computer to more efficiently find the best solution for complicated problems. Tohoku University researchers have ...

The phenomenal success of our integrated circuits managed to obscure an awkward fact: they’re not always the best way to solve problems. The features of modern computers—binary operations, separated ...

Quantum computers promise to speed calculations dramatically in some key areas such as computational chemistry and high-speed networking. But they're so different from today's computers that ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

(Nanowerk News) What are the prime factors, or multipliers, for the number 15? Most grade school students know the answer — 3 and 5 — by memory. A larger number, such as 91, may take some pen and ...

Generating a string of random numbers is easy. The hard part is proving that they’re random. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams once pointed out, “that’s the problem with randomness: you can never be sure ...