  We discuss the fundamental role of entanglement as the essential nonclassical
feature providing the computational speed-up in the known quantum algorithms.
We review the construction of the Fourier transform on an Abelian group and the
principles underlying the fast Fourier transform algorithm. We describe the
implementation of the FFT algorithm for the group of integers modulo 2^n in the
quantum context, showing how the group-theoretic formalism leads to the
standard quantum network and identifying the property of entanglement that
gives rise to the exponential speedup (compared to the classical FFT). Finally
we outline the use of the Fourier transform in extracting periodicities, which
underlies its utility in the known quantum algorithms.
