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My understanding is that quantum computers are very good at simulating quantum physics. Which, granted, probably doesn't have many commercial applications.
by nwah1 11y ago
My understanding is that quantum computers are very good at simulating quantum physics. Which, granted, probably doesn't have many commercial applications.
- murbard2 11y agoDesigning better transistors, discovering new drugs...
- gjm11 11y ago"Normal" quantum computers are good at simulating quantum physics, or would be if we could build big enough ones. D-Wave's adiabatic allegedly-quantum computer is not, so far as anyone knows. The only thing (so far as I am aware) that anyone knows how to do with D-Wave's machine is to use it to find approximate solutions to certain optimization problems. The last I heard, it did so slower than a standard-issue laptop running (non-quantum!) software designed to find approximate solutions to the same optimization problem that D-Wave's underlying hardware models. That was before the release of the latest D-Wave machine. I don't think it was ever clear whether D-Wave's device scales better than a conventional computer when trying to solve larger problems. Perhaps it does, in which case their new $10M machine may outperform commodity laptops. [EDITED to add: see http://www.archduke.org/stuff/d-wave-comment-on-comparison-with-classical-computers/ http://www.archduke.org/stuff/d-wave-comment-on-comparison-w... and the other pages linked therefrom for some comparisons between D-Wave's reported performance and that of some heuristic optimization software running on a commodity laptop. Disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.]