I misinterpreted the outcome, my thought was along the lines of "are they creating (eg) SSH keys out of magnetic charges and radix-sorting them to find the factors" (or something).

eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3YnENM0cFg

...we're at the materials science stage where it's not out of the realm of possibility to "do it with the atoms" and "let god/physics sort it out".