2020 computingChamping at the bits : Nature: "Five years ago, if you'd have asked anyone working in quantum computing how long it would take to make a genuinely useful machine, they'd probably have said it was too far off even to guess. But not any longer.

'A useful computer by 2020 is realistic,' says Andrew Steane of the quantum-computing group at the University of Oxford, UK. David Deutsch, the Oxford physicist who more or less came up with the idea of quantum computation, agrees. Given recent theoretical advances, he is optimistic that a practical quantum computer 'may well be achieved within the next decade'."