5 ms·

Is this the first practical quantum computer? (D-wave 128 qbit box)

43 points by iwwr 15y ago

DandelionRex 15y ago
This is a) fake or b) a scam.
- Bud 15y ago
  Yes, some quick googling appears to show that they've been pushing similar scams since 2007 or so: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=d-wave+hoax http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... They claimed to have a 16-qubit machine then, whereas a recent (May 2) New Yorker article revealed that Oxford's research lab quantum computer is only an 8-qubit machine, and that's in 2011. Yale has built one and it's only 2-qubit.
- sanswork 15y ago
  or maybe neither. Dwave has been around for a while and while the question is still out on how useful their devices actually are they have been publicly demonstrated and available for at least a few years. Google has even used their machines though I think just for research purposes.
- Devilboy 15y ago
  DWave just published a paper in Nature that shows that they have built a 8 qubit quantum device. This could be legit. However even if what they say is 100% true and correct, it's still not a 'general' quantum computer, it's only wired for one kind of optimization problem, and it's only 128 qubits which will not allow you to do things current computers can not yet do. You need closer to 1000 qubits for that.
dublinclontarf 15y ago
Is... is this real?
- gcb 15y ago
  Maybe. But if you try to check, it may affect the scam result... i mean test results.
- dublinclontarf 15y ago
  I emailed them asking how much and when. $10million USD available now. Ouch.
smanek 15y ago
Scott Aaronson is an MIT prof and a leading researcher in quantum computing. Here is his take on a recent paper DWave published in Nature: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639 (And the Nature paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature10012.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature1...)
- gcb 15y ago
  "after four years of the quantum computing community being told to review a restaurant based solely on its ice water and table settings, I’m delighted that D-Wave has finally brought an appetizer." haha... those physicists
  - darklajid 15y ago
    Later in that article: > As some of you might be aware, I’m a theoretical computer scientist, not a physicist (much less an experimentalist).
beloch 15y ago
D-Wave has been operating under heavy-duty NDA's for a long time. I know of at least two published authors in quantum physics who have signed an NDA and been given the grand tour. I know one well enough to have asked him what he thought without divulging anything he couldn't tell me. He said what D-Wave had when he was there was not a general purpose quantum computer, but rather, a sort of hard-coded specific purpose device not unlike an electronic circuit built to implement a specific algorithm rather than function as a general purpose programmable device. Regardless, what D-Wave has is real enough that they are not being laughed at in the circles that matter. I would also say that they aren't doing anything that makes academics who are working on QC devices despair of doing anything useful themselves. I think it's rather unlikely that this device is going to be busting open RSA keys anytime soon. In short, this is probably not fake or a scam. It's just not quite what the original poster was hoping it was.
- JulianMorrison 15y ago
  From what I've heard, this thing is designed to solve whatever can be transformed into energy minimization problems - "travelling salesman", routing the wires on printed circuit boards, urban planning, etc etc.
bobds 15y ago
It's not fake, but it's not the quantum computer you would expect. http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/loser-dwave-does-not-quantum-compute/2 http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/loser-dwave-does... "D-Wave's system uses a chip with little loops of niobium metal containing Josephson junctions—two superconductors separated by an insulator. When the chip is cooled to very low temperatures, tiny electrical currents flowing around the loops exhibit quantum properties, and you can use the direction to represent the states of a qubit: Counterclockwise represents 0, clockwise represents 1, and current flowing both ways represents a superposition of 0 and 1. D-Wave's superconducting qubits are not new, and other groups use similar devices. But whereas most groups are trying to build the quantum logic gates from which all computing operations can be derived—an approach known as the gate model—D-Wave has adopted a different approach, called adiabatic quantum computation. Here's the gist: You initialize a collection of qubits to their lowest energy state. You then ever so gently (or adiabatically) turn on interactions between the qubits, thus encoding a quantum algorithm. In the end, the qubits drift to a new lowest-energy state. You then read out the qubits to get the results."
- Symmetry 15y ago
  Oh man, I was a solder monkey for the Orlando group at MIT in my sophomore year, and we also used niobium loops for QBits. That box has got to be pretty big, though. Niobium doesn't superconduct until you bring it down to less that 10K, and to get a stable qbit we had to bring things down into the 100mK range - requiring a helium dilution refrigerator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator
- hugh3 15y ago
  Yes, I wish they'd stop calling it a "quantum computer". It's not a quantum computer. It's a thingy. That said, I'm quite impressed that D-Wave is finally bringing out a thingy that actually does something. Reading the Scott Aaronson post elsewhere in this thread it appears that they've finally got around to demonstrating that their thingy really does do stuff that involves quantum mechanics. They're still way behind their implausible schedule, and their thingy still can't do anything that a classical computer can't do a helluva lot faster and cheaper, but I do congratulate them on having a proper working thingy. But they need to stop calling this thingy a quantum computer.
thorin 15y ago
"It's a Ming Mecca chip!"
cubtastic71 15y ago
ok so where is the "hello world" program for this type of system? .. wonders if it could figure out the HTML5 specs before we do?
- yid 15y ago
  Please consider returning to slashdot
nothis 15y ago
"Commercial"? That website looks like it's using the same web template as Orbo.

43 points by iwwr 15y ago

DandelionRex 15y ago

This is a) fake or b) a scam.

Bud 15y ago
Yes, some quick googling appears to show that they've been pushing similar scams since 2007 or so: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=d-wave+hoax http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... They claimed to have a 16-qubit machine then, whereas a recent (May 2) New Yorker article revealed that Oxford's research lab quantum computer is only an 8-qubit machine, and that's in 2011. Yale has built one and it's only 2-qubit.
sanswork 15y ago
or maybe neither. Dwave has been around for a while and while the question is still out on how useful their devices actually are they have been publicly demonstrated and available for at least a few years. Google has even used their machines though I think just for research purposes.
Devilboy 15y ago
DWave just published a paper in Nature that shows that they have built a 8 qubit quantum device. This could be legit. However even if what they say is 100% true and correct, it's still not a 'general' quantum computer, it's only wired for one kind of optimization problem, and it's only 128 qubits which will not allow you to do things current computers can not yet do. You need closer to 1000 qubits for that.

dublinclontarf 15y ago

Is... is this real?

gcb 15y ago
Maybe. But if you try to check, it may affect the scam result... i mean test results.
dublinclontarf 15y ago
I emailed them asking how much and when. $10million USD available now. Ouch.

smanek 15y ago

Scott Aaronson is an MIT prof and a leading researcher in quantum computing. Here is his take on a recent paper DWave published in Nature: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639 (And the Nature paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature10012.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature1...)

gcb 15y ago
"after four years of the quantum computing community being told to review a restaurant based solely on its ice water and table settings, I’m delighted that D-Wave has finally brought an appetizer." haha... those physicists
- darklajid 15y ago
  Later in that article: > As some of you might be aware, I’m a theoretical computer scientist, not a physicist (much less an experimentalist).

beloch 15y ago

D-Wave has been operating under heavy-duty NDA's for a long time. I know of at least two published authors in quantum physics who have signed an NDA and been given the grand tour. I know one well enough to have asked him what he thought without divulging anything he couldn't tell me. He said what D-Wave had when he was there was not a general purpose quantum computer, but rather, a sort of hard-coded specific purpose device not unlike an electronic circuit built to implement a specific algorithm rather than function as a general purpose programmable device. Regardless, what D-Wave has is real enough that they are not being laughed at in the circles that matter. I would also say that they aren't doing anything that makes academics who are working on QC devices despair of doing anything useful themselves. I think it's rather unlikely that this device is going to be busting open RSA keys anytime soon. In short, this is probably not fake or a scam. It's just not quite what the original poster was hoping it was.

JulianMorrison 15y ago
From what I've heard, this thing is designed to solve whatever can be transformed into energy minimization problems - "travelling salesman", routing the wires on printed circuit boards, urban planning, etc etc.

bobds 15y ago

It's not fake, but it's not the quantum computer you would expect. http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/loser-dwave-does-not-quantum-compute/2 http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/loser-dwave-does... "D-Wave's system uses a chip with little loops of niobium metal containing Josephson junctions—two superconductors separated by an insulator. When the chip is cooled to very low temperatures, tiny electrical currents flowing around the loops exhibit quantum properties, and you can use the direction to represent the states of a qubit: Counterclockwise represents 0, clockwise represents 1, and current flowing both ways represents a superposition of 0 and 1. D-Wave's superconducting qubits are not new, and other groups use similar devices. But whereas most groups are trying to build the quantum logic gates from which all computing operations can be derived—an approach known as the gate model—D-Wave has adopted a different approach, called adiabatic quantum computation. Here's the gist: You initialize a collection of qubits to their lowest energy state. You then ever so gently (or adiabatically) turn on interactions between the qubits, thus encoding a quantum algorithm. In the end, the qubits drift to a new lowest-energy state. You then read out the qubits to get the results."

Symmetry 15y ago
Oh man, I was a solder monkey for the Orlando group at MIT in my sophomore year, and we also used niobium loops for QBits. That box has got to be pretty big, though. Niobium doesn't superconduct until you bring it down to less that 10K, and to get a stable qbit we had to bring things down into the 100mK range - requiring a helium dilution refrigerator. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator
hugh3 15y ago
Yes, I wish they'd stop calling it a "quantum computer". It's not a quantum computer. It's a thingy. That said, I'm quite impressed that D-Wave is finally bringing out a thingy that actually does something. Reading the Scott Aaronson post elsewhere in this thread it appears that they've finally got around to demonstrating that their thingy really does do stuff that involves quantum mechanics. They're still way behind their implausible schedule, and their thingy still can't do anything that a classical computer can't do a helluva lot faster and cheaper, but I do congratulate them on having a proper working thingy. But they need to stop calling this thingy a quantum computer.

thorin 15y ago

"It's a Ming Mecca chip!"

cubtastic71 15y ago

ok so where is the "hello world" program for this type of system? .. wonders if it could figure out the HTML5 specs before we do?

yid 15y ago
Please consider returning to slashdot

nothis 15y ago

"Commercial"? That website looks like it's using the same web template as Orbo.