Lev K. Grover's quantum search algorithm is the fastest search conventional or quantum search algorithm. It uses a superposition of all the data, and then through quantum manipulations can find the exact one that is being looked for. These quantum manipulations increase the probability that the readout will be correct and do take time. In the case of an unsorted list of n items a conventional computer would have to look at each one till it found it (on the average it would look at half the items or n/2 compares). The quantum method would only take the square root of n (n^.5 computations on average) quantum manipulations to retrieve the item.