The next milestone in efforts to create a much-discussed supercomputer that harnesses the power of quantum mechanics appears to have been reached, with researchers proclaiming the arrival of the first conventional quantum computer processor.
As reported by Science Daily, the new solid state processor developed by a Yale-led team is reportedly the first in the world to use the power of quantum states to process information - something that physicists and scientists have been working towards for years now, using lasers, particle beams and photons.
And it seems the Yale team has managed to do something that has so far eluded scientists: harness a qubit, the fundamentally complex building block of quantum computations.
The fundamental decision and storage building block in today's PCs or laptops is the bit, which can be in either the True of False condition (1 or 0). The qubit can exist in both states simultaneously, leading to the prospect of exponential gains in processing performance.
The new chip is being hailed as a breakthrough for its ability to do quantum processing on a CPU that has basic similarities to conventional silicon processors.
It is worth nothing that the incredible potential power and complexity of quantum computing means it isn't without hyperbole or even controversy. There is even some dispute about the exact abilities of a prototype quantum computer, dubbed Orion.
Just what quantum mechanics might do for computers is yet to be fully realised, but there's no doubt that the field has led to some interesting theories about the way the world works, as this video goes some way to demonstrate: