5 ms·
This is a good overview: http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-series/introduction-d-wave-quantum-hardware http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/back
by RangerScience 10y ago
This is a good overview: http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-series/introduction-d-wave-quantum-hardware http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-series/...
Inside is also a link to the whitepaper on how to program the DWave, which has a lot more detail on "ok, but what does that mean I can do with it, and how?". More or less, you need to map your problem space to the functioning of the DWave (a series of weights), and then you need to map the answer space of the DWave (out-state of each qubit) back to your problem space. The DWave doesn't actually return a canonical answer, but rather a bundle of statistics for each qubit, from which you then determine your answer (say, by taking the average).
Some things to remember, aside from the debate about whether it's actually a QC and actually uses entanglement to produce answers:
1) All 2k qubits are NOT entangled with each other
The qubits are grouped into cells, and the cells have a coupling between them, but each qubit does not (directly) interact with all other qubits. This is a large part of why it's not a "general" quantum computer; it's more like an ASIC.
2) You program in "similarity" and "dissimilarity" to neighboring qubits, and an initial weighting.
Each qubit in the dwave has some programmed possibility of being 1 or 0, and of being the same or different from each neighbor. "Running" the calculation more or less applies all these weights, and then you look at the resulting state.
3) The "answer" is actually the statistics on multiple measurements.
After programming the weights, you run the machine, and get out an answer. You do this 50, 100, whatever, times, and now you have statistics on the state of each qubit. From this you determine your answer; AFAIK, usually you just take the average.
- partisan 10y agoThank you for making this easier to comprehend for the lay programmer.
- bike4beer 10y agoD-Wave isn't the only Unicorn Tech on the Planet, YC-HN seem to have a dozen of their own such Unicorn's. http://www.helionenergy.com/ http://www.helionenergy.com/ Here is a said 'fusion engine', funny a trillion dollars and 60+ years has been spent on FUSION, and nada a result, but the unicorns have solved the problem, don't worry no human is allowed to see or touch the tech, not unlike a real unicorn, where the horn too, is accepted but un-proven. IMHO Quantum-Computing would be useful for encryption/decryption, that is about it. D-Wave is a unicorn, like most of the YC-HN unicorn's, just that D-Wave has been kept alive for a long time on government dole. Perhaps YC unicorn's too well be kept alive on FIAT-DOLE, but then again the investment pool of fools in SV run deep.
- RangerScience 10y agoYou're welcome! Despite all the debate, it IS super cool, even if it's just because they're literally making a bunch of parts super-cool. But it's not as awesome as scifi QCs :/
- cperciva 10y agoit's more like an ASIC. Did you mean s/ASIC/FPGA/ ?
- teraflop 10y agoNo, the D-Wave chip has a fixed topology, unlike an FPGA which lets you connect gates more-or-less arbitrarily.
- cperciva 10y agoTraditional FPGAs are basically a fixed grid of cells which you program. You can't program new wires into existence...
- dfox 10y agoThe main interconnect fabric of FPGA typically consists of enough wires and programmable switches that you don't have to care that much that their topology is fixed. In the D-Wave case it looks like the topology of coupling between cells is completely fixed.
- rbanffy 10y ago> it's more like an ASIC. I get the impression it's a lot like how one uses an analog computer.