Computers

You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better to avoid them.

Researchers have shown that a problem relating to the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum computers but hard for classical ones.

Seventy years after the invention of a data structure called a hash table, theoreticians have found the most efficient possible configuration for it.

Researchers prove that navigating certain systems of vectors is among the most complex computational problems.

What makes a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer? It’s a surprisingly subtle question that physicists are still grappling with, decades into the quantum age.

Mathematical logic and the code of computer programs are, in an exact way, mirror images of each other.

By using “classical shadows,” ordinary computers can beat quantum computers at the tricky task of understanding quantum behaviors.

Quantum computing is still really, really hard. But the rise of a powerful class of error-correcting codes suggests that the task might be slightly more feasible than many feared.

One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that shrinks data without sacrificing information.