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."

Comments

Oh no, not D-Wave.

[Interoperable]

I trust Google not to do anything unbelievably stupid (a bit silly perhaps, but nothing too absurd) but thinking that D-Wave can make a quantum computer is a very, very bad idea. Now it sounds like Google has been working on the algorithm side and I suspect that they're doing good work. The trouble is that D-Wave is doing the hardware. This is a company that has yet to demonstrate any success whatsoever.

They frequently release press updates saying that they have added more bits to the machine but they have never shown it to work for even a small number of bits. The physicists who developed the idea of an adiabatic quantum computer say that D-Wave seems to have misinterpreted their theory to make unrealistic claims and the whole thing is regarded as a bit of a joke in the physics community.

That said, developing the algorithms is a worthwhile thing to do so Google may not be relying on D-Wave to justify their research. I hope not. D-Wave may actually be on to something big that they haven't revealed to the scientific community, but probably not.