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Has D-Wave's systems ever actually been shown to be "quantum systems?"
by M_Grey 10y ago
Has D-Wave's systems ever actually been shown to be "quantum systems?"
- blackholesRhot 10y agoThere were a couple papers a year ago showing pretty convincingly that yes there is some entanglement between some of its qubits. But from what I've seen there's zero evidence that they've done anything that would be hard for a classical computer. All signs thus far point to snake oil, but with a genuinely great team. They'll probably do something interesting 5 years from now and then Geordie will point back at all the naysayers and say "see I told you so!!"
- johncolanduoni 10y agoTheir only innovation seems to be "more qubits that haven't even be demonstrated to be qubits", so I'm a bit sceptical that their future endeavors will do much. Either the team or their management is insisting they ignore everything we know about adiabatic quantum computing despite having not found a hint of contradicting evidence.
- johncolanduoni 10y agoIf you mean in a "quantum computer" sense, no. They're slower than classical alternatives for sure, and significant entanglement has yet to be demonstrated. Even theoretically, D-Wave has yet to produce any reasons to believe the mechanism of operation is quantum in any significant way. Remember your CPU requires quantum mechanics to explain its operation (above and beyond "that's why the atoms don't implode"), so "it does quantum things" does not a quantum computer make.
- M_Grey 10y agoYes, I meant it as in, "Processes qubits with entangled ensembles of photons". Thanks for the answer, it's what I remembered from the last time I'd read about them, but that was a while ago.