I'm not spreading FUD; I am correcting misinformation from muppets whose understanding doesn't go beyond press releases. Nobody has yet done a Shor factorization of the number 15; the end, and even if someone's press release says so there is no scalable way of factoring large integers.
Quantum annealing will never be used for factoring prime numbers from large integers, and hasn't even managed to factor 3 and 5 from 15. Even if you click your heels together three times and wish for it really hard, it's not going to happen.
Did you read the nature article, or just the press releases?
Both methods requires 𝒪(log2(𝑁)) qubits in total, where N is the number to be factored. The novelty of our demonstration of quantum annealing for prime factorization is based on the reduction in quantum resources required to execute factoring and the experimental verification of the algorithmic accuracy using currently available hardware. As a proof-of-concept, we have demonstrated these methods by factoring integers using the D-Wave 2000Q quantum annealing hardware, but these methods may be used on any other quantum annealing system with a similar number of qubits, qubit degree of connectivity, and hardware parameter precision. Assuming that quantum annealing hardware systems will continue to grow both in the number of qubits and bits of precision capabilities, our methods offer a promising path toward factor much larger numbers in the future.
"RSA cryptography is based on the difficulty of factoring large integers, which is an NP-hard (and hence intractable) problem for a classical computer."
That is incorrect: there is no proof that factoring is NP-hard. Anyway, you can hardly expect me to take anything they say after this seriously.
I was referring to the quantum annealing example, because no 97 qubit quantum computer exists yet.