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## A Look At Quantum Computer Manufacturer D-Wave and Its Founder96

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

• #### Not a QC! (Score:5, Informative)

on Thursday June 20, 2013 @07:23PM (#44066213) Homepage

The summary is saying it is a quantum computer because it sold these to Lockheed Martin and Google. Please. stop that shit. They are pretty fast computers, however nobody has proven it is quantum computers. Even the CTO at D-Wave is not able to demonstrate it and he just doesn't care saying it is damn fast and that's all matter for him.

Slashdot should stop advertising D-Wave computers as QC until it has been proven.

• http://www.npr.org/2013/05/22/185532608/quantum-or-not-new-supercomputer-is-certainly-something-else [npr.org]
”What we do is build computers,” Rose says, “and if we can build the fastest computers the world has ever known, you can call them whatever you like, and I’ll be happy.”
• http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 [scottaaronson.com]
"Instead, journalists have preferred a paper released this week by Catherine McGeoch and Cong Wang, which reports that quantum annealing running on the D-Wave machine outperformed the CPLEX optimization package running on a classical computer by a factor of ~3600, on Ising spin problems involving 439 bits. Wow! That sounds awesome! But before rushing to press, let’s pause to ask ourselves: how can we reconcile this with the USC group’s result of no speedup?"
• #### Re:Not a QC! (Score:5, Insightful)

on Thursday June 20, 2013 @07:46PM (#44066363) Journal
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: (Score:2)

Those papers don't indicate it's a quantum computer either. It's a computer that makes calculations using "quantum effects", as the company claim on the few places they have to be honest.

• #### Re:Not a QC! (Score:5, Funny)

on Thursday June 20, 2013 @10:24PM (#44067213)

Let's make every one happy :
D-Wave = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \Psi_{classical computer} + \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \Psi_{quantum computer}
But, PLEASE, don't measure it, seriously...

• #### Re: (Score:2)

Ah, the moment I run out of mod points...

Funny!
• #### Re: (Score:2)

Please, please use a command like \mathit or \text around text used in maths mode. I see $italics$ far too often still in papers and presentations.

So, you should e.g. write: $\Psi_\mathit{classical computer}$

• #### Re: (Score:2)

Let's make every one happy :
D-Wave = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \Psi_{classical computer} + \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \Psi_{quantum computer}
But, PLEASE, don't measure it, seriously...

Why not? All you have to do is ph{#%${%&+'${`%&INDETERMINATE CARRIER

• #### Not fast either (Score:1)

The one thing the D-Wave computer is good at is solving the "D-Wave problem", or things that can be expressed in terms of that problem. However, even at this, its speciality, it is 12000 times slower than a normal single-core computer. The reason why some were reporting that the D-wave computer was faster than classical computers at this problem was simply that they used a very inefficient program to do this.
http://www.archduke.org/stuff/d-wave-comment-on-comparison-with-classical-computers/ [archduke.org]

So basically: Th

• #### It is not fast either (Score:2)

The one thing the D-Wave computer is good at is solving the "D-Wave problem", or things that can be expressed in terms of that problem. However, even at this, its speciality, it is 12000 times slower than a normal single-core computer. The reason why some were reporting that the D-wave computer was faster than classical computers at this problem was simply that they used a very inefficient program to do this.
http://www.archduke.org/stuff/d-wave-comment-on-comparison-with-classical-computers/ [archduke.org]

So basically: Th

• #### not to sound picky (Score:5, Informative)

on Thursday June 20, 2013 @07:32PM (#44066287) Homepage
im not sure how best to phrase this, but its not a quantum computer in the absolute sense. Its more of a computer in a quantum state that acts as an annealer. all it does is find the global minimum of a given objective function over a given set of candidate solutions. companies that buy it should at least be given full disclosure that its basically a ten million dollar math co-processor...one where depending upon the solver and the equation, mileage may seriously vary. traditional computing has been conjectured to be, at the cost of the D-Wave, not only faster but cheaper [ieee.org].
• #### Re: (Score:2)

We should require labels that say it contains quantum modified chips.

• #### I'll believe it when I see it (Score:5, Interesting)

on Thursday June 20, 2013 @10:08PM (#44067127)

Wake me when someone makes a 2048-qubit quantum computer that can run Shor's algorithm. The Xbox public key and I have some unfinished business.

• #### Re: (Score:2)

Is it really necessary to have the same number of qubit as the problem, tho?

Here we are talking about factoring a number that is the product of two large probable-primes, and the sum of their binary lengths is 2048 so the numbers themselves are approximately ~1024 bits each.
• #### Re: (Score:2)

Is it really necessary to have the same number of qubit as the problem, tho?

Unfortunately, I think it's worse than that.

The "quantum" part of Shor's algorithm factoring N involves a period finding operation that requires an input and output of k-qubits where k is approximately 2logN+1. A simplistic implementation to factor a 2048-bit number would be minimally 2x2048+1 input and the same number of output so about 8194 qubits (I don't think you can share the input and output for the quantum fourier transform computation step). That also presupposes that you can change the circuit

• #### Re: (Score:2)

a ten million dollar math co-processor.

If you read some of the articles about the company, they're not just selling hardware. They enter into contracts for long-term partnerships with these companies, offering to keep them at the leading edge of quantum-or-whatever-it-is computing during that period.

They're probably going to get the 1024 then 2048-bit devices, and certainly whatever the next thing is they come up with.

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