A Look At Quantum Computer Manufacturer D-Wave and Its Founder

First time accepted submitter tpjunkie writes "Many slashdot readers will remember D-wave's announcement in 2007 of its quantum computer, an announcement met with skepticism and a good amount of scorn. However, today the company has sold quantum computers to such companies as Lockheed Martin and Google, and their computers have gone from a handful of qubits to 512 in their most recent offerings. Nature has a story including an interview with the company's founder Geordi Rose, and a look at where the company is headed and some of the difficulties it has overcome."

Re:Not a QC!

[tpjunkie]

I submitted the article. I called it a QC, because if you read TFS, there are a couple of papers linked indicating that there seems to be evidence that the machine is functioning as an adiabatic quantum computer. Of course, these results have been challenged. However, for the purposes of a summary, it seemed in my mind, ok to call it what the manufacturer does, which is an adiabatic quantum computer.

Re:quantum computing

[hawguy]

This technology won't be impressive until it can perform general computing tasks. Right now, it's too constrained of a technology to be useful for something as simple as web browsing. Great promise... but that's what it is: A promise.

There are lots of specialized computers that do one thing really well, yet still aren't great at general computing tasks... like GPUs and DSPs. For that matter, the CPU in your hard drive may not be nearly powerful enough to run a web browser, yet it's still extremely useful for its intended purpose.

Not every computer development is meant to make Firefox run faster.

Re:Not a QC!

[Anonymous Coward]

A computer directly using quantum effects is a quantum computer.

Transistors directly use quantum effects to work, yet we don't call desktop computers "quantum computers".

Most of the interest around "quantum computers" exists because there's good reason to believe that they can yield improvements in the asymptotic time complexity in solving some problems (the mathematical definition would be something like "can solve BQP problems efficiently"). Before Shor's algorithm, almost no one cared about quantum computing.

So, if all you have is a special-purpose computer like D-Wave's, which just uses some quantum effects to calculate something, but you're not sure it can solve BQP problems efficiently, it's debatable whether it should be called "quantum computer".