IBM wants everyone to try a quantum computer

[...] the IBM Quantum Experience will allow students, hobbyists and even serious researchers to experiment with algorithms that are radically different from the ones now used for everything from word processing to speech recognition.

“It’s meant to be educational but also to be the beginnings of a larger framework,” said Jerry Chow, manager of the Experimental Quantum Computing Group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Some quantum computing theorists believe that such a computer might be designed as a “universal” computer capable of performing any task much faster than machines now in use.

The idea of computers that might exploit the “spooky” laws of quantum behavior that describe nature at an atomic level was first broached by physicist Richard Feynman in 1981.

[...] scientists have proposed specialized algorithms that might allow quantum computers to break computer codes or even simulate complex biological processes.