Diamond could play the same role for quantum computers that silicon does for conventional ones.
Quantum computers will one day make today’s supercomputers look like children’s toys, so great is their processing potential. And yet the quantum computers built so far have had little more processing power than a handheld calculator.
The difficulty is in being able to handle enough quantum bits of information (qubits) to do anything useful. Qubits are notoriously fragile. Sneeze and they decohere, leaking their valuable information into the environment. And this raises the fundamental dichotomy that quantum engineers face. They need quantum bits that can be poked and prodded into performing calculations in concert with other qubits and yet robust enough to survive over long periods of time.
