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The title is slightly misleading. This article is only talking about the performance of one specific quantum computer. (The D-Wave Two).

VonGuard 12y ago
Are there others that you can buy? As far as I know, D-Wave is the only one out of the lab. I'm totally a D-Wave skeptic, but I do have to state that the scientists who tested this thing sound like idiots, unless they really did try quantum annealing. If the D-Wave guys say they tried the wrong set of equations for the device, I'm inclined to believe them. Even though I don't even believe this thing is really a quantum computer, there are much more specific and defined ways to poke holes in D-Wave than just by running some tests and comparing speed. D-Wave has, very specifically, targeted this machine at one function: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing Unless you're doing quantum annealing on the D-Wave, it might as well be a toaster, an Android phone, or a Windows PC. It's made to do only quantum annealing. Did D-Wave 2 somehow expand its capabilities? I'm basing this on D-Wave 1 knowledge, but I cannot imagine anything really changed except the number of Qbits inside the thing. All this having been said, the D-Wave has yet to prove that it is even doing Quantum Annealing, let alone that it's faster than a traditional computer at this problem set. No one has shown it to be faster than traditional outside of D-Wave.
- mpthrapp 12y ago
  I'm not as up on Quantum Computing as I'd like to be, but the title seems to imply that QC as a concept is no faster than regular computing. Which may be true for general purpose computing, but that's never what QC was intended for.
- shoyer 12y ago
  Yes, of course they did what D-wave calls quantum annealing. As you say, that's all the D-Wave machines can do. The D-Wave executive's claim that the problems used in the study are "not at all the right choice for probing a quantum speedup" is in reference to the specific subtypes of quantum annealing problems that this study looked at, not whether they were doing quantum annealing at all.

VonGuard 12y ago

Are there others that you can buy? As far as I know, D-Wave is the only one out of the lab. I'm totally a D-Wave skeptic, but I do have to state that the scientists who tested this thing sound like idiots, unless they really did try quantum annealing. If the D-Wave guys say they tried the wrong set of equations for the device, I'm inclined to believe them. Even though I don't even believe this thing is really a quantum computer, there are much more specific and defined ways to poke holes in D-Wave than just by running some tests and comparing speed. D-Wave has, very specifically, targeted this machine at one function: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing Unless you're doing quantum annealing on the D-Wave, it might as well be a toaster, an Android phone, or a Windows PC. It's made to do only quantum annealing. Did D-Wave 2 somehow expand its capabilities? I'm basing this on D-Wave 1 knowledge, but I cannot imagine anything really changed except the number of Qbits inside the thing. All this having been said, the D-Wave has yet to prove that it is even doing Quantum Annealing, let alone that it's faster than a traditional computer at this problem set. No one has shown it to be faster than traditional outside of D-Wave.

mpthrapp 12y ago
I'm not as up on Quantum Computing as I'd like to be, but the title seems to imply that QC as a concept is no faster than regular computing. Which may be true for general purpose computing, but that's never what QC was intended for.
shoyer 12y ago
Yes, of course they did what D-wave calls quantum annealing. As you say, that's all the D-Wave machines can do. The D-Wave executive's claim that the problems used in the study are "not at all the right choice for probing a quantum speedup" is in reference to the specific subtypes of quantum annealing problems that this study looked at, not whether they were doing quantum annealing at all.