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> Quantum annealing is most certainly not what quantum computing is about Near as I can tell, it's the only form of practical quantum computation that's availa

> Quantum annealing is most certainly not what quantum computing is about Near as I can tell, it's the only form of practical quantum computation that's available to end-users in any meaningful way. Everything else so far is vaporware with ridiculously high error rates. > (it is not particularly "quantum" either) The qubits - josephson junctions and superconducting loops - are indeed in quantum superposition with each other if their claims are true. This is a macroscopic quantum-mechanical effect; to call it "not particularly quantum" belies a lack of understanding as to what they're doing. > most researchers are fairly annoyed at D-wave for originally pushing this nonsense D-Wave is making their system publicly available for free. Have you signed up and taken a look at their demos? Admittedly it's a bit beyond my mathematical ability but it's clear the basic seed is there for something that works; they just need a bigger graph and more connections between qubits. There's no reason to assume they won't have their own equivalent of Moore's Law at some point where these things grow year over year. > transmon qubits at Google/IBM/Yale for some well known prototypes of quantum computing hardware (which are admittedly quite far from being practical or usable). Do they have _any_ results worth caring about yet? I don't think they're anywhere near something working on a practical scale. You can buy a D-Wave machine, or time on it - it's not vaporware, even if most people don't find it useful. For the first few years of gate model machines people aren't really going to find them all that useful for day to day things either - just like computers in the 1940s and 50s, it was very specific, high-dollar applications first, and things for the common man decades later.

deepnotderp 8y ago
> that's available to end-users in any meaningful way. Everything else so far is vaporware You can't just call all research "vaporware" because it happens to not exist today at this moment... > ridiculously high error rates. You know that D-Wave's qubits have very high error rates, right? They have always espoused the "more qubits, more error" strategy. > but it's clear the basic seed is there for something that works; they just need a bigger graph and more connections between qubits. D-Wave has been trying for quite some time to increase the connectivity of the Chimera graphs with "pegasus" and so forth, it's a Hard Problem. > There's no reason to assume they won't have their own equivalent of Moore's Law at some point where these things grow year over year. Yes there is, adding more qubits is not a simple task like adding more transistors. Plus, more qubits doesn't necessarily help you unless you have the necessary connectivity as well, which is even superficially speaking at least quadratically difficult. > Do they have _any_ results worth caring about yet? You... you do realize that nothing D-Wave has shown so far is even faster than a laptop, right? And btw, I don't mean to be hating on D-Wave either, I think they get a lot of unnecessary hate.
krastanov 8y ago
You mentioned that some of the details are beyond your math skills. The reason I am so vocal against claims that Dwave have a quantum computer is because I work in this field (Yale Quantum Institute) and these details are what my work is about. The "qubits" Dwave has most certainly are not entangled and even they have never claimed it. Dwave themselves have stopped claiming they have a quantum computer, and have introduced this term "quantum annealing" which is something that you can more efficiently do on a classical computer. Yes, you can buy something from Dwave, so it is not vaporware, it is just snake oil. This is why it is frustrating for me to respond to your comments: you are dismissing the very measurable progress my colleagues have done over the last two decades (just look at qubit lifetimes, "break even" error correction procedures, generation of entangled pairs, etc) while claiming that a device that is incapable of sustaining any particularly interesting quantum state is to be held in high regard. And while Dwave's engineering efforts should be praised, their misleading PR has led to false misleading claims like yours and for that at least their PR department deserves to be shunned.

deepnotderp 8y ago

> that's available to end-users in any meaningful way. Everything else so far is vaporware You can't just call all research "vaporware" because it happens to not exist today at this moment... > ridiculously high error rates. You know that D-Wave's qubits have very high error rates, right? They have always espoused the "more qubits, more error" strategy. > but it's clear the basic seed is there for something that works; they just need a bigger graph and more connections between qubits. D-Wave has been trying for quite some time to increase the connectivity of the Chimera graphs with "pegasus" and so forth, it's a Hard Problem. > There's no reason to assume they won't have their own equivalent of Moore's Law at some point where these things grow year over year. Yes there is, adding more qubits is not a simple task like adding more transistors. Plus, more qubits doesn't necessarily help you unless you have the necessary connectivity as well, which is even superficially speaking at least quadratically difficult. > Do they have _any_ results worth caring about yet? You... you do realize that nothing D-Wave has shown so far is even faster than a laptop, right? And btw, I don't mean to be hating on D-Wave either, I think they get a lot of unnecessary hate.

krastanov 8y ago

You mentioned that some of the details are beyond your math skills. The reason I am so vocal against claims that Dwave have a quantum computer is because I work in this field (Yale Quantum Institute) and these details are what my work is about. The "qubits" Dwave has most certainly are not entangled and even they have never claimed it. Dwave themselves have stopped claiming they have a quantum computer, and have introduced this term "quantum annealing" which is something that you can more efficiently do on a classical computer. Yes, you can buy something from Dwave, so it is not vaporware, it is just snake oil. This is why it is frustrating for me to respond to your comments: you are dismissing the very measurable progress my colleagues have done over the last two decades (just look at qubit lifetimes, "break even" error correction procedures, generation of entangled pairs, etc) while claiming that a device that is incapable of sustaining any particularly interesting quantum state is to be held in high regard. And while Dwave's engineering efforts should be praised, their misleading PR has led to false misleading claims like yours and for that at least their PR department deserves to be shunned.