In the one-way quantum computer a quantum computation is performed by first preparing a special entangled state (the cluster state), and then performing a sequence of adaptive single-qubit measurements on that state.
This talk will describe two ideas. First, I will explain a simple argument for why in some physical systems (particularly optics) it may be much easier to build a one-way quantum computer than it is to build a conventional circuit-based computer.
In the second part of the talk I'll discuss how to make the one-way quantum computer fault-tolerant. I'll explain why the fault-tolerance is not obvious from standard thresholds for quantum circuits, and how to adapt the threshold proof to the one-way quantum computer.