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I work on a real, cold-as-space production quantum computer and its cloud service that you can sign up and use for free today - the D-Wave Advantage system, wit

I work on a real, cold-as-space production quantum computer and its cloud service that you can sign up and use for free today - the D-Wave Advantage system, with 5000+ qubits, that you can use via D-Wave Leap. The difference here is that we produce a quantum annealer, which is useful for optimization problems instead of for database searches + factoring. It's already delivering some real-world value for early applications. While gate model machines are interesting, D-Wave took the tack of implementing the model of QC most likely to lead to actual useful applications within our lifetimes. Gate-model QC does seem to be very useful, but until it reaches millions of physical qubits it's not going to be producing any results beyond pet laboratory projects, and it remains to be seen if that's even physically possible. In contrast, quantum annealing has been able to grow at a good rate both in terms of qubit count, degree of connectivity between qubits, and also in terms of reaching lower noise and better quality results. We also have hybrid solvers that combine the state of the art in classical algorithms with QPU sampling to get the lowest energy state possible with a much larger graph than we can do in hardware. I think it's a very interesting field to follow, there are huge investments being made and real progress is happening on a number of fronts. Our competitors are trying to bring live systems to market, too, but it's harder to see them being much more useful than simulators for the foreseeable future.

ogogmad 5y ago
What do you think of Scott Aaronson's previous scepticism towards D-wave computers? I think it boiled down to them not doing a comparison with the best classical algorithms running on the best classical computers. Are your comparisons apples to apples? I think what you wrote makes sense as a way of maximising the chances of producing a viable product. I suppose there aren't any guarantees that it will be competitive with bog-standard computers, but it might be a reasonable gamble.
- mikewave 5y ago
  I work on the classical computers around the exotic stuff, so I'm not really qualified to comment. Either way, Aaronson's negative commentary - which is many years out of date, at this point - is not something that anyone pays very much mind to, because at the end of the day one can't allow a mere critic on the sidelines to get in the way of actually producing real machines. > maximising the chances of producing a viable product That's the goal. The annealing QPU is a co-processor, like your GPU, like vector processors, or a DSP, etc. It doesn't need to compete with classical compute on the things classical compute is good at; it needs to compete on the things classical compute is bad at, or at the very least, bad at without throwing massive piles of money at it. There is a crossover point for optimization problems where we will be able to show a price/performance advantage over classical compute, which we term Quantum Advantage (vs. the more divisive term of Quantum Supremacy). The trick at this point is formulating problems in such a way as to be something you can run on our hardware, which still requires a deep mathematical skillset. This is something we're building on... perhaps pay attention to our Qubits conference coming up next week - https://www.qubits.com/ https://www.qubits.com/ - there should be some interesting announcements!

ogogmad 5y ago

What do you think of Scott Aaronson's previous scepticism towards D-wave computers? I think it boiled down to them not doing a comparison with the best classical algorithms running on the best classical computers. Are your comparisons apples to apples? I think what you wrote makes sense as a way of maximising the chances of producing a viable product. I suppose there aren't any guarantees that it will be competitive with bog-standard computers, but it might be a reasonable gamble.

mikewave 5y ago
I work on the classical computers around the exotic stuff, so I'm not really qualified to comment. Either way, Aaronson's negative commentary - which is many years out of date, at this point - is not something that anyone pays very much mind to, because at the end of the day one can't allow a mere critic on the sidelines to get in the way of actually producing real machines. > maximising the chances of producing a viable product That's the goal. The annealing QPU is a co-processor, like your GPU, like vector processors, or a DSP, etc. It doesn't need to compete with classical compute on the things classical compute is good at; it needs to compete on the things classical compute is bad at, or at the very least, bad at without throwing massive piles of money at it. There is a crossover point for optimization problems where we will be able to show a price/performance advantage over classical compute, which we term Quantum Advantage (vs. the more divisive term of Quantum Supremacy). The trick at this point is formulating problems in such a way as to be something you can run on our hardware, which still requires a deep mathematical skillset. This is something we're building on... perhaps pay attention to our Qubits conference coming up next week - https://www.qubits.com/ https://www.qubits.com/ - there should be some interesting announcements!