I almost shocked to know that, now if you want to play with a small quantum computer, you can do. If it is not a big happy shock, then hear it again. You can do it for completely free!
Yes, when I came to know about it, I was in disbelief. University of Bristol, developed a two-(qu)bit quantum computer. It has decided to give the access to this quantum computer, anybody who is interested in it. Basically University doesn’t sell the quantum computer. Instead it will let you use it over the cloud. How awesome it is?? However to get that access, one should come up with some interesting problem/algorithm.
Hey, don’t worry of you don’t have a killing unique idea. At least you can practice with their simulator for now. In the simulator, you can input some photons and adjust their phases and you will get some statistics at the output. If you are confident about your experiment in the simulator, you can then run the experiment on real quantum computer. May be one day, who knows, you will be solving a big problem using the basics learned from these quantum computer experiments.
I know nothing much about quantum computers. But having studied the quantum mechanics and recently exploring about the computers make me really excited about this! If you want to know more details of quantum computer, look at the links below.
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/physics/research/quantum/qcloud
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/quantum-computing/
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