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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."
Since when was NASA in the contracting-to-manufacture-computer business? NASA is more of a bureaucracy with a collection of labs all over the nation. They usually hand out the contracts. When they need computers they usually contract IBM or Silicon Graphics (maybe not lately) to do so.
Disclaimer: IAAPRQC (I Am A Physicist Researching Quantum Computing).
I have no doubt their chip actually exists. That's not what people are skeptical of. There are more fundamental questions, a few of which I'll list below, along with my guesses as to the answers:
1) Does their chip demonstrate global coherence?
Maybe.
2) If yes to (1), can they maintain that when scaling up to larger numbers of qubits?
Almost certainly not with anything like their present design, unless they move to implement quantum error correction and the massive amounts of overhead that entails.
3) If no to either (1) or (2), can they implement a practical algorithm that gives at least a sqrt(N) speed-up over classical computers without global coherence?
Possible, but would be surprising if true. This is probably the main thing the academic community is skeptical about--we want to see some peer-reviewed research from D-Wave on this.
4) Why is all the press coverage so horribly wrong and misinformative?
Because it's more fun to make jokes and stupid statements about quantum mechanics than it is to actually write a clear and well-researched article. Also, talking to an actual physicist is far too scary for your typical J-school grad.
See this post on Scott Aaronson's blog for a much more informative and detailed analysis of D-Wave's claims.
It's good to hear that there are at least some journalists with an interest and an aptitude for science. I think the entire quantum computing academic community has been a bit bummed out about the quality of media coverage lately. Scott Aaronson's blog has a number of posts discussing this issue, including a letter that he wrote to The Economist about its particularly bad D-Wave coverage. There is also some good news--Scott got asked by Scientific American to write a summary of Shor's algorithm--but mostly reading press coverage of our field is just maddening.
Science is hard work -- is it really surprising that interpreting scientific research, and translating results into layman's terms, is in some ways almost as hard?
No, it's certainly not surprising. I get a reminder of how hard it is to explain this stuff every time I try to tell someone what I do and their eyes glaze over. I don't claim to be good at explaining it, whereas science journalists seem to be quite good at making stuff entertaining and bringing it down to a layman's level. The problem is the completely uncritical coverage of miraculous claims, and the glaring technical errors that horribly distort the science. Is it common for journalists/editors to run a draft of their article past an actual scientist in the field? If not, why doesn't this happen? Pride? Deadlines? Journalism guidelines?
After being burned on a previous interview, I'd now be very reluctant to give an interview about my work without the reporter agreeing to run a draft past me for me to check for technical accuracy. Do science journalists honor that kind of request? If not, can you give me a journalist's perspective on what I can do to ensure the resulting article is accurate? I ask because I've got a paper coming out soon that might attract a bit of media interest.