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phys.org is reporting that a team of South African Researchers have successfully run Simon's algorithm on a quantum computer.
Simon's algorithm, named after Daniel Simon, is a solution to Simon's Problem that is:
...designed specifically to run faster on a quantum computer than it would, on a standard computer. Its purpose is to figure out whether a black box returns a unique output for every possible input. The team ran the simplest version of the algorithm on a quantum computer that used just six qubits, and report that it took just two iterations to solve the problem, where it would take a normal computer three.
If verified it's the first unambiguous case where an algorithm designed specifically for a quantum computer has been able to demonstrate an exponential gap to the equivalent classical computer algorithm run time.
The paper detailing this experiment is available at arXiv.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 19 2014, @07:26PM
A Quantum Co-Processor like the Math Co-Processors of yore might be interesting.
All the benefits of a traditional processor but divert to the quantum processor to run that O(n^n) operation.