Quantum Domain

Many of us are hopeful that quantum computers will become practical and useful computing devices some time during the 21st century. It is probably fair to say, though, that none of us can now envision exactly what the hardware of that machine of the future will be like; surely, it will be much different than the sort of hardware that experimental physicists are investigating these days. But of one thing we can be quite confident—that a practical quantum computer will incorporate some type of error correction into its operation. Quantum computers are far more susceptible to making errors than conventional digital computers, and some method of controlling and correcting those errors will be needed to prevent a quantum computer from crashing.