(29 Oct 2019)

To break a widely used RSA 2048-bit encryption, a classical computer with one trillion operations per second would need around 300 trillion years. This is such a long time that we all feel very safe.

A quantum computer using Shor‘s algorithm could achieve the same feat in just 10 seconds, with a modest 1 million operations per second. That‘s the power of quantum computers: 300 trillion years versus 10 seconds.