Yeah, that's completely off (it would be a more apt description of the distinction between multiple cores and hyperthreading). The important characteristic of

Yeah, that's completely off (it would be a more apt description of the distinction between multiple cores and hyperthreading). The important characteristic of quantum computation is not that it's faster or more parallel than classical computation, but that it's a generalisation of classical computation. The same way that classical mechanics describes a subset of quantum mechanics rather than disjoint phenomena, all current classical CPUs are technically "quantum" CPUs (the best kind of quantum CPUs!). So, what does this mean? Well, for all the software we have today, and for almost everything we know how to code today, absolutely nothing; in fact, most of what we can do on classical computers will be slower simply because it will be quite some time before a quantum computer is anywhere near as well-engineered as, say, a Core i7 – especially when you take into account that the properties of quantum mechanics make this engineering not only different but also significantly more difficult. What we do get from the computational paradigm shift, however, is a broader set of operations which allow for a broader set of algorithms. Take Grover's algorithm (the one mentioned in the article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_algorithm#Algorithm_steps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_algorithm#Algorithm_ste... If you understand the notation, what you'll see is a series of linear operations (quantum gates) being applied to vectors (qubits (classical bits are scalars)) in a quantum circuit. These can all be used to describe any operation which would be performed on, say, an x86 core (albeit more verbosely), but can also take advantage of quantum mechanical properties to manipulate non-classical information (which gets complicated to discuss). For the canonical example of how this can significantly change computation as we know it, see Shor's algorithm, which speeds up prime number factorisation from sub-exponential time to polynomial time, and thus could potentially break RSA encryption if we had a practical quantum computer): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm Aside from that, I'm sure people much smarter than I am could go on in technical depth about how, despite not really being an advancement of mythical proportions in and of itself, this new class of algorithms would be able to revolutionise areas like search, machine learning, physical/biological/chemical simulation, and so on.