Why can't we parallel our way to Q-Day?

I had a crypto "epiphany" this morning that I’m pretty means I must be missing something pretty major…it has to be wrong…and I’m hoping you can quickly spot my logic flaw and correct me. I'm even a little cautious in posting this here because it will bear how much of an idiot I am. But let me continue for my own educational purposes. Traditionally, it’s believed we need 8000-9000 (or whatever number) of very stable qubits and Shor’s algorithm to crack today’s 4096-bit RSA keys. We don’t have quantum computers capable of trying all possible keys of a 4096-bit keyspace. But we do have a lot of quantum computers in the 100+ stable qubit range. I think most people would agree that it doesn't take magic to create a 100-qubit computer anymore. What’s to stop anyone from creating and using 100 of those 100+ qubit computers and farming out the work, so that each participating computer only has to cover a subset of the possible keys? As a simpler example: My key space is 1000 possible keys Each participating computer can only do 100 possible keys in the timeframe allowed So I get 10 of those computers and tell them to each take 1/10th of the key space First computer takes 1-99 Second computer takes 100-199 And so on Can’t the RSA key space of all possible values be farmed out to a farm of less capable quantum computers? What am I missing? I know for sure the answer is not that easy. submitted by /u/rogeragrimes [link] [comments]