9
Shor’s Algorithm
Much of the buzz around quantum computing comes from one simple fact: a quantum computer with several thousand qubits can solve a certain strategic problem that classical computers have no hope of solving.
In 1994 [1], Peter Shor unveiled an algorithm to crack today’s widely used encryption schemes. Decrypting a message might take trillions of years on a classical computer. But Shor’s algorithm, running on a sufficiently large quantum computer, can decrypt a message in less than a minute. It would be nice if most people welcomed a solution to this decryption problem. But, unfortunately, most people who want to break encryption schemes are malicious hackers.
Businesses and governments are taking this problem seriously. At this ...
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