FOSDEM.org: PKI with Matthias Brossard and Quantum Computing with Bruno Marchal

Matthias Brossard (very brief):

"PKI stands for Public Key Infrastructure. In the broad sense of the term, it refers to an infrastructure that allows differents parties to interact using public key cryptography (this definition could apply to PGP keyrings the). The 'term' PKI is now almost synonymous with PKIX which is an IETF standard for a more hierarchical PKI. The PKIX trust model is a lot more formal than the one in PGP and therefore fits much better the corporate world."

Bruno Marchal:

"It has not been immediately clear that a quantum computer offers really special advantage until the work of Simon and Shor shows that such a machine could factorise natural number n in polynomial time. Note the algorithm has been recently implemented (NATURE december 2001) and tested on the number 15 (!).

Nobody knows a classical algorithm capable of such time-polynomial factorisation, and this has been a real shock for the computing people. Grover showed also how to search an unstructured database more rapidly. Such quantum machine can generate truly random oracle. To sum up it seems that quantum computer could execute much more quickly some computation and provide new sort of resource.

Feynman also foresees that such computer would be able to simulate efficiently quantum phenomena. There are good reason (but still no proof) that quantum phenomena cannot be simulate efficiently on a classical computer. Since then we get surprising results every month in quantum communication, quantum information, quantum computing, but also quantum games and strategies. The number of publications grow in all countries."

Related Stories:

• FOSDEM.org: Philip Hazel, Author of Exim(Jan 17, 2002)
• FOSDEM.org: Richard Dale, author of KDE Bindings(Jan 17, 2002)
• LinuxPR: Gnustep, Mozilla, KDE, PHP and Gnome to hold developers meetings during FOSDEM Conference(Jan 17, 2002)
• FOSDEM.org: Interview with Ximian Developer Michael Meeks(Jan 11, 2002)
• FOSDEM.org: Interview with Damien Sandras of the GNOME Meeting Project(Jan 11, 2002)
• FOSDEM.org: Interviews With Speakers for the Upcoming FOSDEM Conference(Jan 03, 2002)
• FOSDEM Community Support Operation Launched(Dec 21, 2001)