Re: Crypto and new computing strategies

[Jim choate <ravage@bga.com>]

While I can understand the commen wisdom such QM type machines are not a threat
to the present cyrpto-cracking horsepower race I must admit I don't agree with
it. First, historicaly (and emotionaly on my part) I have a hard time taking the
premise that the status quo will stay the status quo. I have this belief that
some bright person is going to come along and blow all our pipe dreams away.
It has happened before and it WILL happen again, especially when you consider
the resources available to the government. 

As to the NSA and their resources, they try to stay 5 yrs. ahead of others on
specific topics, you can bet this is one. Also, when you throw compartmented
security into the mix I see it as completely possible that the vast majority of
the NSA itself believes it doesn't exist while in some basement office there is
a little super-cooled sugar cube sized widget cranking out numbers at a high rate 
of speed. 

As to the computing power of QM, when one considers that electrons shift orbits
instantly (otherwise photons would have to have momentum) and the distances are
so small the scaling factor is NOT strictly linear. 

I completely fail to understand the position that it is an extension of a SIMD
architecture, at that scale MIMD architectures will be the standard. 

My .02...