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So far D-Wave has failed to provide any direct or indirect evidence that their "quantum computer" actually achieves quantum speed up. An investigation by a scie

So far D-Wave has failed to provide any direct or indirect evidence that their "quantum computer" actually achieves quantum speed up. An investigation by a scientist from ETH Zurich who was able to use their machine came to the conclusion that their quantum algorithm does not outperform a classical system. It's hard to think of a reason to refuse to publicly prove that your quantum computer is actually working if it really is, if it isn't it makes a lot of sense of course. Concerning the purchases of Google and the US government: These are probably more like research grants for D-Wave, as the buyers expect that at some time there might come a working quantum computer from D-Wave, and buying a prototype (even a faulty one) puts them in a good position to be the first to actually get a working version, while helping the company to stay afloat. By the way, Google invested 200 million USD in a different quantum computing technology endeavour led by a UC Santa Barbara professor, which would make little sense if they already had a working quantum computer. The value of D-Wave as a company is not only defined by their ability to build a working quantum computer though, as there could be significant value in the patent portfolio they built / acquired and in their expertise in building and assembling superconducting chips and systems, which are both highly non-trivial tasks. Their way of communicating with the public is of course highly misleading, which is why many people in the scientific community have very little respect for them, as this is viewed as highly unethical and harmful behavior in science (but not necessarily in the business world).

eghad 10y ago
The UCSB professor you're referring to is John Martinis [0] and though the physical structure differs (they're using small arrays of "Xmons" instead of typical transmons qubits to minimize decoherence and thus error) they're still working within the realm of adiabatic quantum computing/quantum annealing, the same general avenue D-Wave is pursuing (with a "digital" twist) which is why Google invested in both of them. [0] http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/publications.shtml http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/publications.shtm... [1] https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/quantum-annealing-with-digital-twist.html https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/quantum-annealing-wi...
- ThePhysicist 10y ago
  Sorry that's just not correct (to my knowledge at least), as John was always working on gate-based quantum computing and is currently pursuing designs based on resonator-coupled Transmon qubits (the X-mon refers to the geometry of the qubits, which provide four capacitive ports to couple them to resonators and fast flux lines). The next milestone for their collaboration is the demonstration of "quantum superiority" using a 40(-ish) qubit processor to perform an algorithm that is beyond the reach of current supercomputers. The real effort comes afterwards though as the system needs to be scaled up in order to be useful in any real-world task. The quantum annealing example from the Google research blog seems to use normal quantum gates to simulate the nearest-neighbor interactions in a spin chain. The nature article is currently down but it seems they use "Trotterization" to simulate the spin chain using one- and two-qubits gates.
  - eghad 10y ago
    It is indeed, correct. The annealing example I linked is from his team (here's another one with full citation with Martinis at the end there [0]). And if you want further proof that Martinis and the Google Quantum team are pursing quantum annealing look no further than the Adiabtic Quantum Computing Conference that was held this summer where their team held several talks including "Building Quantum Annealer v2.0" [1]. And I didn't touch on your earlier (erroneous) comment on the scientific community's perception of D-Wave, but I think it needs to be said that in actual professional circles the research they're performing isn't met with as much derision as they seem to garner in these more causally informed settings. It's hyped and a difficult subject to understand, so that's fair, but I suggest really informing yourself if you're going to go out there and make the claims you're making. [0] http://research.google.com/pubs/pub44292.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub44292.html [1] https://aqccreg2016.eventfarm.com/events/index/7fff5387-0000-456c-a4da-3f0389a7aa72?page=7fff46cb-0000-456c-a4da-4701510cb78d https://aqccreg2016.eventfarm.com/events/index/7fff5387-0000... http://1qbit.com/insights-inside-googles-annual-adiabatic-quantum-computing-conference/ http://1qbit.com/insights-inside-googles-annual-adiabatic-qu... [2] (Another article reviewing QA with Martinis and team) http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206 http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206
blazespin 10y ago
What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Why does pure research have to only be the domain of Universities? I think it was a great experiment that failed, but that probably goes for something like 95% of great experiments. Lots of pure research goes nowhere. It's not like Geordie is defrauding the old and disabled. He's working with really really really smart people with lots of money. Honestly, we need more of this and less of SnapChat startups.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Because there is no reliable way to fund it. Said another way, the time horizon for repayment is too long and too risky for traditional, non-corporate, non-public investing. Lets assume you have a breakthrough with research, now you have to make a product to sell. Which means you need to likely build a new market, or even in the best case of an existing market change the team composition to fund product development. Those are all risks that Banks and Venture Money (except in very rare cases) aren't willing to take.
- ThePhysicist 10y ago
  There's nothing wrong with doing pure research as a startup, in fact I'd love to see more of these kind of startups and I'm thinking about starting one myself! What's harmful (IMHO) is making spectacular claims (look we have a working quantum computer!) and then not back them up by evidence. It is of course okay to sell your product aggressively as a startup, and sometimes to oversell it as well (fake it until you can make it), but I really have my doubts that D-Wave can "make it" in the near future, as there are just so many difficult problems to solve for which we don't even have a viabe approach yet (e.g building large scale qubit coupling schemes), and trust me most quantum computing research groups have people that are at least as smart and dedicated as the people working at D-Wave.

eghad 10y ago

The UCSB professor you're referring to is John Martinis [0] and though the physical structure differs (they're using small arrays of "Xmons" instead of typical transmons qubits to minimize decoherence and thus error) they're still working within the realm of adiabatic quantum computing/quantum annealing, the same general avenue D-Wave is pursuing (with a "digital" twist) which is why Google invested in both of them. [0] http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/publications.shtml http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/publications.shtm... [1] https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/quantum-annealing-with-digital-twist.html https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/quantum-annealing-wi...

ThePhysicist 10y ago
Sorry that's just not correct (to my knowledge at least), as John was always working on gate-based quantum computing and is currently pursuing designs based on resonator-coupled Transmon qubits (the X-mon refers to the geometry of the qubits, which provide four capacitive ports to couple them to resonators and fast flux lines). The next milestone for their collaboration is the demonstration of "quantum superiority" using a 40(-ish) qubit processor to perform an algorithm that is beyond the reach of current supercomputers. The real effort comes afterwards though as the system needs to be scaled up in order to be useful in any real-world task. The quantum annealing example from the Google research blog seems to use normal quantum gates to simulate the nearest-neighbor interactions in a spin chain. The nature article is currently down but it seems they use "Trotterization" to simulate the spin chain using one- and two-qubits gates.
- eghad 10y ago
  It is indeed, correct. The annealing example I linked is from his team (here's another one with full citation with Martinis at the end there [0]). And if you want further proof that Martinis and the Google Quantum team are pursing quantum annealing look no further than the Adiabtic Quantum Computing Conference that was held this summer where their team held several talks including "Building Quantum Annealer v2.0" [1]. And I didn't touch on your earlier (erroneous) comment on the scientific community's perception of D-Wave, but I think it needs to be said that in actual professional circles the research they're performing isn't met with as much derision as they seem to garner in these more causally informed settings. It's hyped and a difficult subject to understand, so that's fair, but I suggest really informing yourself if you're going to go out there and make the claims you're making. [0] http://research.google.com/pubs/pub44292.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub44292.html [1] https://aqccreg2016.eventfarm.com/events/index/7fff5387-0000-456c-a4da-3f0389a7aa72?page=7fff46cb-0000-456c-a4da-4701510cb78d https://aqccreg2016.eventfarm.com/events/index/7fff5387-0000... http://1qbit.com/insights-inside-googles-annual-adiabatic-quantum-computing-conference/ http://1qbit.com/insights-inside-googles-annual-adiabatic-qu... [2] (Another article reviewing QA with Martinis and team) http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206 http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206

blazespin 10y ago

What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Why does pure research have to only be the domain of Universities? I think it was a great experiment that failed, but that probably goes for something like 95% of great experiments. Lots of pure research goes nowhere. It's not like Geordie is defrauding the old and disabled. He's working with really really really smart people with lots of money. Honestly, we need more of this and less of SnapChat startups.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
What's wrong with doing pure research as a Startup? Because there is no reliable way to fund it. Said another way, the time horizon for repayment is too long and too risky for traditional, non-corporate, non-public investing. Lets assume you have a breakthrough with research, now you have to make a product to sell. Which means you need to likely build a new market, or even in the best case of an existing market change the team composition to fund product development. Those are all risks that Banks and Venture Money (except in very rare cases) aren't willing to take.
ThePhysicist 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with doing pure research as a startup, in fact I'd love to see more of these kind of startups and I'm thinking about starting one myself! What's harmful (IMHO) is making spectacular claims (look we have a working quantum computer!) and then not back them up by evidence. It is of course okay to sell your product aggressively as a startup, and sometimes to oversell it as well (fake it until you can make it), but I really have my doubts that D-Wave can "make it" in the near future, as there are just so many difficult problems to solve for which we don't even have a viabe approach yet (e.g building large scale qubit coupling schemes), and trust me most quantum computing research groups have people that are at least as smart and dedicated as the people working at D-Wave.