Quantum computing (Kwantumberekening)

There has been no lack of coverage in the past few years in scientific journals of the topic of quantum computation. Rightly so, as this is a novel idea with--so far--at least one very important practical application (prime factorisation) as soon as the technology can accommodate reasonably sized computations. Interest in quantum computing has been sparked by both the realization that increasing miniaturisation will eventually bring computer scientists face-to-face with quantum effects, and by the grasping of the potential for massive parallelism inherent in the Hilbert space representation of quantum systems and in the special effects of quantum entanglement.