A US physicist, Christoph Boehme, and colleagues have taken a step towards developing a superfast computer based on showing the reality of quantum physics by showing that it is feasible to read data stored in the form of magnetic "spins" of phosphorus atoms.

Boehme pointed out that their work represents a breakthrough in the search for a nanoscopic mechanism that could be used for a data readout device. They have demonstrated experimentally that the nuclear spin orientation of phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon can be measured by very subtle electric currents passing through the phosphorus atoms.

Boehme further said that they have resolved a major obstacle for building a particular kind of quantum computer, the phosphorus-and-silicon quantum computer. For this concept, data readout is the biggest issue, and they have shown a new way to read data.

In modern digital computers, information is transmitted by flowing electricity in the form of electrons, which are negatively charged subatomic particles. Transistors in computers are electrical switches that store data as 'bits', in which 'off' (no electrical charge) and 'on' (charge is present) represent one bit of information that is either 0 or 1.

For example, with three bits, there are eight possible combinations of 1 or 0. But three bits in a digital computer can store only one of those eight combinations at a time.

However, quantum computers would be based on the strange principles of quantum mechanics, in which the smallest particles of light and matter can be in different places at the same time.

In a quantum computer, one 'qubit' (quantum bit), could be both 0 and 1 at the same time. So with three qubits of data, a quantum computer could store all eight combinations of 0 and 1 simultaneously. That means a three-qubit quantum computer could calculate eight times faster than a three-bit digital computer.

It is also learnt that while typical personal computers today calculate 64 bits of data at a time, a quantum computer with 64 qubits would be 2 to the 64th power faster, or about 18 billion billion times faster.