Integrated quantum photonics
As the field has progressed new quantum algorithms have been developed which provide short and long term routes towards the demonstration of the superiority of quantum computers over their classical counterparts. Cluster state computation is now generally accepted as the approach that will be used to develop a fully fledged quantum computer. Whilst development of quantum computer will require the synthesis of many different aspects of integrated optics, boson sampling seeks to demonstrate the power of quantum computation via technologies readily available and is therefore a very promising near term algorithm to doing so. In fact shortly after its proposal there were several small scale experimental demonstrations of the boson sampling algorithm
Quantum mind
There are computers that are specifically designed to compute using quantum mechanical effects. Quantum computing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement. They are different from binary digital electronic computers based on transistors. Whereas common digital computing requires that the data be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1), quantum computation uses quantum bits, which can be in superpositions of states. One of the greatest challenges is controlling or removing quantum decoherence. This usually means isolating the system from its environment as interactions with the external world cause the system to decohere. Currently, some quantum computers require their qubits to be cooled to 20 millikelvins in order to prevent significant decoherence. As a result, time consuming tasks may render some quantum algorithms inoperable, as maintaining the state of qubits for a long enough duration will eventually corrupt the superpositions. There aren't any obvious analogies between the functioning of quantum computers and the human brain. Some of the hypothetical models of quantum mind have proposed mechanisms for maintaining quantum coherence in the brain, but they have not been shown to operate.