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There is a history of literally many years of bombastic claims being made by D-Wave (especially in the popular press) without anything to back them up. Scott Aa

There is a history of literally many years of bombastic claims being made by D-Wave (especially in the popular press) without anything to back them up. Scott Aaronson (http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/), an MIT professor who is one of the better-known scientists in the quantum computing field, has written reams of pages about this. I would recommend browsing his blog if you are really interested in the claims and counterclaims about this company. As for me, I will not waste a single minute reading an article about them, until they can convince the sceptics first. This may seem unfair (if people aren't willing to give them a chance, then how will we know if they've really made a breakthrough), but this company has earned this kind of treatment by bamboozling journalists and getting breathless press coverage based on nothing. Briefly, for years, they failed to even demonstrate that their machine exhibits any quantum entanglement at all; this makes it meaningless to talk about quantum computing on that machine, which didn't prevent press stories touting it as the next revolution in all of human existence. Since then, there have been some articles claiming that possibly there is some kind of quantum behaviour in the machine, but there was still no evidence that this quantum behaviour is doing anything meaningful in the actual computations. At some point, I stopped following the story.

eoinmurray92 12y ago
You are correct that they seem to have not yet built a proper adiabatic quantum computer (aren't even trying/capable of building a universal one). However I do think that the press around them is good for quantum computing in general. I work trying to make the early stages of a qcomputer using semiconductor quantum dots and I definitely think that the press around DWave is helpful. Firstly they are showing that there is a well defined commercial interest in such a computer. I also think that they are paving the path that other such companies will take in the future. But yeah I agree, they have not yet shown much in terms of a real, useful quantum computer. There is a lot of unjustified hype in the technology, but at the same time I think its useful for this hype to exist for the q-tech industry in general.
- sharpneli 12y ago
  I do not think that the press from D-Wave is good for quantum computing in general. For this reason: " I predict that the very same people now hyping D-Wave will turn around and—without the slightest acknowledgment of error on their part—declare that the entire field of quantum computing has now been unmasked as a mirage, a scam, and a chimera." - Scott Aaronson If D-Wave fails it will cause at least a decade of non existent funding to QC in general because it will be reduced to the level of cold fusion in the press.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    So basically, D-Wave are working hard to make sure there will be a Quantum Computing Winter, two decades of darkness and cold for QC researchers before the field can eventually get going again.
    - aaronem 12y ago
      Looks that way. They even wrote their machine's OS in Lisp, or so I hear, which probably doesn't bear directly on the question at hand but is certainly suggestive as anything.
      - mike_ivanov 12y ago
        This is FUD. There are some system utilities written in Lisp by one of the devs, but there is nothing like an OS written in Lisp. It's the same as saying that Linux is written in Haskell because of Xmonad. And by the way, spreading stupid gossips like this is very suggestive on certain individual's intents.
        aaronem 12y ago
        Good to know; I haven't been able to find a lot of detail on the subject of how D-Wave uses Lisp, so I was just repeating what I've heard, which I concede I probably shouldn't have done. (And I'm a Lisp hacker myself, so I'm not really interested in attempting to further wreck the reputation of that language family; indeed, I'm delighted to see projects like Clojure beginning to resurrect said reputation, and the only way I could be happier about that would be if Clojure did a better job living up to its predecessors.)

eoinmurray92 12y ago

You are correct that they seem to have not yet built a proper adiabatic quantum computer (aren't even trying/capable of building a universal one). However I do think that the press around them is good for quantum computing in general. I work trying to make the early stages of a qcomputer using semiconductor quantum dots and I definitely think that the press around DWave is helpful. Firstly they are showing that there is a well defined commercial interest in such a computer. I also think that they are paving the path that other such companies will take in the future. But yeah I agree, they have not yet shown much in terms of a real, useful quantum computer. There is a lot of unjustified hype in the technology, but at the same time I think its useful for this hype to exist for the q-tech industry in general.

sharpneli 12y ago
I do not think that the press from D-Wave is good for quantum computing in general. For this reason: " I predict that the very same people now hyping D-Wave will turn around and—without the slightest acknowledgment of error on their part—declare that the entire field of quantum computing has now been unmasked as a mirage, a scam, and a chimera." - Scott Aaronson If D-Wave fails it will cause at least a decade of non existent funding to QC in general because it will be reduced to the level of cold fusion in the press.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  So basically, D-Wave are working hard to make sure there will be a Quantum Computing Winter, two decades of darkness and cold for QC researchers before the field can eventually get going again.
  - aaronem 12y ago
    Looks that way. They even wrote their machine's OS in Lisp, or so I hear, which probably doesn't bear directly on the question at hand but is certainly suggestive as anything.
    - mike_ivanov 12y ago
      This is FUD. There are some system utilities written in Lisp by one of the devs, but there is nothing like an OS written in Lisp. It's the same as saying that Linux is written in Haskell because of Xmonad. And by the way, spreading stupid gossips like this is very suggestive on certain individual's intents.
      - aaronem 12y ago
        Good to know; I haven't been able to find a lot of detail on the subject of how D-Wave uses Lisp, so I was just repeating what I've heard, which I concede I probably shouldn't have done. (And I'm a Lisp hacker myself, so I'm not really interested in attempting to further wreck the reputation of that language family; indeed, I'm delighted to see projects like Clojure beginning to resurrect said reputation, and the only way I could be happier about that would be if Clojure did a better job living up to its predecessors.)