Paving the way for a faster quantum computer: Unordered quantum computation: Improved efficiency
Vienna, Austria | Posted on August 11th, 2015
One of the most exciting and most difficult proposed quantum technologies is the quantum computer. Quantum logic gates are the basic building blocks of a quantum computer, but constructing enough of them to perform a useful computation is difficult. In the usual approach to quantum computing, quantum gates are applied in a specific order, one gate before another. But it was recently realized that quantum mechanics permits one to "superimpose quantum gates". If engineered correctly, this means that a set of quantum gates can act in all possible orders at the same time. Surprisingly, this effect can be used to reduce the total number of gates required for certain quantum computations.

http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=52078