NASA Backs Quantum Computing Claim

narramissic writes "Canadian startup D-Wave's demonstration via Web link of a prototype quantum computer in mid-February was met with skepticism in the academic community, but NASA has confirmed that it did, in fact, build a special chip used in the disputed demonstration. According to an article on ITworld, D-Wave designed the quantum chip and then contracted with NASA to build it."

Comments

Does that NASA built a chip mean anything?

[stratjakt]

Does it mean the chip works, and it actually performs quantum calculations? I see nothing in the TFA where NASA confirms or denys the actual function of the chip, just that they made it based on D-Wave's design.

I still don't see any proof that anyone computed anything quantumly. How hard is this to prove, anyways, to all the quantum physicists in the house?

Re:Does that NASA built a chip mean anything?

[sco08y]

How hard is this to prove, anyways, to all the quantum physicists in the house?

IANAQP, but I think it's pretty hard to prove given that you can simulate a quantum computer with a classical computer. (Source.)

But, if you have lots of qbits then you can simply argue that it's running too fast to be a simulation:

"Take for example a system of only a few hundred qubits, this exists in a Hilbert space of dimension ~1090 that in simulation would require a classical computer to work with exponentially large matrices (to perform calculations on each individual state, which is also represented as a matrix), meaning it would take an exponentially longer time than even a primitive quantum computer." (ibid)

So I'm thinking that when they get to their 64 or 128 qbit device that we know for certain that it's genuine.

I wonder how long it'll be before Intel and Motorola are selling quantum computers and arguing about the qbit myth?