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Google Demonstrates Quantum Computer Image Search
An anonymous reader sends along this quote from New Scientist:
"Google's web services may be considered cutting edge, but they run in warehouses filled with conventional computers. Now the search giant has revealed it is investigating the use of quantum computers to run its next generation of faster applications. Writing on Google's research blog this week, Hartmut Neven, head of its image recognition team, reveals that the Californian firm has for three years been quietly developing a quantum computer that can identify particular objects in a database of stills or video (PDF). Google has been doing this, Neven says, with D-Wave, a Canadian firm that has developed an on-chip array of quantum bits — or qubits — encoded in magnetically coupled superconducting loops."
What's "awesome" about Google supporting work like this? It doesn't inspire any awe that a company with money out the wazoo is spending some of it in blue sky research to keep themselves from being Binged.