"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

"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.]