“Large-scale linear systems of equations exist in many fields, such as weather prediction, engineering, and computer vision”, says Harrow. “Quantum computers could supply serious improvements for these and many other problems. For example, a trillion-variable problem would take a classical computer at least a hundred trillion steps to solve, but using the new algorithm, a quantum computer could solve the problem in just a few hundred steps”.

The solution could also be applied to other complex processes such as image and video processing, genetic analyses and even Internet traffic control.

Sounds pretty good to me!