D-Wave Previews Quantum Computing Platform With Over 5,000 Qubits (venturebeat.com) 74
An anonymous reader writes: D-Wave Systems, one of the handful firms that is building a quantum computer, today unveiled the roadmap for its 5,000-qubit quantum computer. Components of D-Wave's next-generation quantum computing platform will come to market between now and mid-2020 via ongoing quantum processing unit (QPU) and cloud-delivered software updates. The complete system will be available through cloud access and for on-premise installation in mid-2020.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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It cannot play even a much simplified version. This is not a general computer and not really a quantum computer either.
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But observing its actions will change its results.
So it's like your boss? (Score:2)
Dilbert needs to explore the quantum boss: I'm observing you, and results don't seem to be improving.
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Did you say Dilbert? [dilbert.com]
[See the first two strips on the linked page.]
As if a thousand qubits cried out (Score:2)
and were annealed. It's an annealer. not exactly a quantum computer. But real QM computers have noise problems and waste almost all their bits on error correction methods. I wonder if there is any limit in which annealing and error correction strike some sort of equivalance or are two limit cases of something? I don't understand it well enough but I'm always trying to get more insight into the limits on the D-wave.
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haha, no annealers are not a true quantum computer at all, cannot do what a UQC can do, and D-Wave repeatedly fails to prove any speedup or capability over normal digital computers with their annealers.
Just a pile of hype, a distraction from universal quantum computing development.
Do these machines actually do anything useful? (Score:2)
the article wasn't very clear on this.
Re:Do these machines actually do anything useful? (Score:5, Funny)
Unless things have improved, their systems are still slower and more expensive than solving the same problem on general digital computers, and probably still slower than using analog computers.
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the article wasn't very clear on this.
Yes, they are quantum annealers that are capable of doing discreet optimization problems.
Protein folding, travelling salesman, quantum chemistry modeling, and artificial neural networks can all benefit from them.
They will not run Shor's algorithm and crack encryption but the class of problems they can tackle is still has very real world applications.
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They will not run Shor's algorithm and crack encryption but the class of problems they can tackle is still has very real world applications.
In fact, the factoring problem has a particularly nice algorithm [dwavesys.com] in the adiabatic regime. It's just a multiplication circuit, where you clamp the outputs and "run it backwards" to deduce the inputs. It's not Shor's algorithm, but D-Wave is way ahead of the (gate-model quantum) competition in terms of factoring.
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It's been tested to work thousands of times better than traditional CPUs at simulated annealing operations; however, research leveraging DWave offerings have been slow to come out. You can reach an article [sciencemag.org] where researchers used DWave technology to conduct their experiments. In addition, there are numerous published papers leveraging DWave tech including application in ML [arxiv.org] and optimization tasks (traffic) [frontiersin.org].
But, healthy skepticism should setup a box around our confidence in any published research until it's ve
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It separates rich gullible people from their money. No other useful application.
Numbers seem strange... (Score:2)
The article's numbers are weird. It talks about going from 6 qbits to 15 qbits, and then jumping to 2000 qbits and an expected 5000 qbits. Did I miss a major advance? I thought each qbit grew the difficulty of creation by an order of magnitude, and 15-20 was considered the upper limit for "cost is no object" with current tech.
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If I'm not completely off, I believe there are 5000 qubits, and each qubit can be connected to 15 other qubits.
Disclaimer, I'm not a rocket doctor.
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There are two types of machines called quantum computers. The ones with 6-15 qbits are using special "entangled" logic gates that can in theory solve any problem, but getting a usable circuit is very difficult. D-wave is a quantum annealer, meaning that it is meant to solve a particular kind of optimization problem. It's kind of like putting a bunch of odd shaped items into a box and shaking the box. The random movement will over time cause the items to pack more tightly into the box. Only in this
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At 15 couplings per qbit, does that mean there's a giant interconnected network in the 5000 qbit computer, or that there are 333 parallel 15 qbit computers?
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DWave's quantum computers aren't like the general purpose ones people usually talk about because all the qubits aren't connected to all the other ones. It's more like a bunch of little quantum processing units all networked together.
That limits the type of problems it can solve, but it does make it a lot easier to scale up.
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That limits the type of problems it can solve, but it does make it a lot easier to scale up.
It also makes it a whole lot slower than the best classical algorithms for the same problems and a whole lot more expensive. This device has no applications where it would make sense to use it.
Re: Numbers seem strange... (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s true of all existing quantum computers. The DWave machine is special purpose, but a sufficiently scaled up version can be faster at some things than a conventional computer.
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Because of the way it works, it can actually not scale up. It can do the same-size problem in parallel more time, but a classical computer can do the same. So no advantage at all, not even in the future. The only possible advantage would be cost, but as the D-Wave is much more complicated and has much lower deployment numbers than classical computers, it would probably take several decades of intense and expensive optimization to get its cost for the same performance down past the classical solution, if it
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The 5000 qbits are not entangled or rather only entangled in very small groups. This makes the whole thing a demented stunt.
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No. The only case where this thing is faster than a classical computer is when the classical computer emulates the d-wave. This of course makes zero sense. The best classical algorithms for the same thing the d-wave can do are much, much faster on much, much cheaper hardware. The whole thing is driven by fantasy and some people with no clue and too much money. It device has no practical application value.
When this is turned on... (Score:5, Funny)
... the stars will all start going out.
Re:When this is turned on... (Score:5, Informative)
... the stars will all start going out.
...why?
This is why. [wikipedia.org]
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If they were entangled, yes. But they are not. As such, this is basically a very expensive paperweight.
The problems that D-Wave solves (Score:3)
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D-Wave doesn't even make quantum computers, they make quantum annealers. So there is no speedup of course.
Obligatory - 640 qubits (Score:1)
They do not have a QC (Score:2)
They have a "Quantum Annealer" and it happens to be much slower than the best algorithms for classical computers. All that keeps them alive is clueless morons with too much money and a desperate desire to be at the forefron of things.