> Except there’s a lot of people (myself included) who don’t consider a quantum annealer to be a quantum computer. Well, great; that's an opinion. The thing is

> Except there’s a lot of people (myself included) who don’t consider a quantum annealer to be a quantum computer. Well, great; that's an opinion. The thing is, if a device uses the quantum-mechanical properties of the universe to do calculation, then it is a quantum computer; asserting that it isn't one is a matter of semantics and categorization, since what you're really doing is redefining the term "quantum computer" to inherently include "gate model" as part of it, which is not a foregone conclusion yet. I believe, from what I've read, that at this point current and projected gate-model quantum computers will not be competitive on optimization problems where quantum annealing will be, so there is definitely utility in continuing to pursue this research and development exercise. > There has been also very little if any actual research in other fields powered with quantum computing. Here's our latest: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/07/14/science.abe2824?rss=1 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/07/14/scie... As a physics playground, annealers are very compelling, and materials research will definitely benefit from these devices.