Google and NASA Snap Up D-Wave Quantum Computer 108
ananyo writes "D-Wave, the small company that sells the world's only commercial quantum computer, has just bagged an impressive new customer: a collaboration between Google, NASA and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association. The three organizations have joined forces to install a D-Wave Two, the computer company's latest model, in a facility launched by the collaboration — the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center. The lab will explore areas such as machine learning — useful for functions such as language translation, image searches and voice-command recognition. The Google-led collaboration is only the second customer to buy computer from D-Wave — Lockheed Martin was the first."
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Except what they obviously intend to use it for - large scale decryption of SSL traffic so the data can be mined by Google (for profit) and the Government (to oppress).
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Except what they obviously intend to use it for - large scale decryption of SSL traffic so the data can be mined by Google (for profit) and the Government (to oppress).
If that's their intent, they'll be sorely disappointed, since D-Wave's machine has only 512 qubits (where as all new SSL certificates are at least 1024 bits). More importantly, the machine is not a general purpose quantum computer and can't run Shor's algorithm.
Besides, NSA is already able to break 1024 bit RSA using conventional computing (not to mention the possibility of much cheaper side channel attacks). See e.g. Schneier [schneier.com].
If we are optimistic, it may be possible to factor a 1024-bit RSA modulus [before 2020] by means of an academic effort on [a] limited scale.
- Kleinjung et al., 2010 [iacr.org], my emphasis
The same paper gives an estimated difficulty of 2 million CPU years for factoring 1024 bit RSA. Sure, that's about $500 million on Amazon EC2, but the NSA have dedicated data centers, dedicated ASICs, smarter algorithms, and money to burn. Realistically, breaking 1024 bit RSA may be as cheap as $50,000 a pop to the NSA... and remember, they only have to break it once per HTTPS certificate, not once per connection.
(As for Google, they're already have your email and knows every page you visit that contains a YouTube video, a +1 button, or Google Analytics... Why would they waste time breaking RSA when the sidechannel attacks are cheap and plentiful?)