Here's a paper that we felt answered this question: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4595 http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4595 Like you, I was worried about the snake oil a

Here's a paper that we felt answered this question: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4595 http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4595 Like you, I was worried about the snake oil aspects of qc, but ...well, I got over it when I looked into the science of the d-wave implementation and talked with folks like Sergio. Please note,we're talking about a quantum annealer here, not a full on qc and we're okay with that :-) Also, disclaimer: I'm a googler who worked with our quantum folks and nasa to get the machine in place.